y&zu nf Vat ^ingdnin 



John Calvin: The Statesman 



By 

Richard Taylor Stevenson 

Chair of History Ohio Wes- 
leyan University 




CINCINNATI: JENNINGS AND GRAHAM 
NEW YORK: EATON AND MAINS 



I "I wo Cooies Received I 



J APP 4 1307 




Copyright, 1907, by 
Jennings and Graham 



3p 



IN MEMORY 

OF 

Jig <3ktte f 

WITH FILIAL GRATITUDE 
AND LOVE 



PROLOGUE 



As a system of theology Calvinism has no place 
in this volume. As a mighty force in the organ- 
ization of ecclesiastical and political disciplines it 
will demand fair if not full treatment. Contrasted 
with Lutheranism Calvinism was the real strength 
of the Reformation. Extinguished in France only 
after a brutal war, glorious in the Netherlands, the 
power behind the throne of Elizabeth, forbidding 
the banns between the rocky fastnesses of Scotland 
and the sunny plains of France, and in America 
holding a thin frontier between the seaboard and 
the savage until the day dawn of a fairer oppor- 
tunity broke upon the young Republic, this new 
power justifies all efforts at explanation. 

Sober judges like Mark Pattison have said, "In 
the sixteenth century Calvinism saved Europe;" 
like Bancroft, "He that will not honor the memory 
and respect the influence of Calvin knows little of 
the history of American liberty ;" even John Morley 
has lately declared, "To omit Calvin from the forces 
of Western evolution is to read history with one 
eye shut." John Calvin interests us far more than 

5 



6 



Prologue. 



his doctrine of predestination. "History, as D61- 
linger has said, is no simple game of abstractions ; 
men are more than doctrines. It is not a certain 
theory of grace that makes the Reformation ; it is 
Luther, it is Calvin. Calvin shaped the mold in 
which the bronze of Puritanism was cast. That 
commanding figure, of such vast power yet some- 
how with so little luster, by his unbending will, his 
pride, his gift of government, for legislation, for 
dialectic in every field, his incomparable industry 
and persistence had conquered a more than pon- 
tifical ascendency in the Protestant world. He 
meets us in England, as in Scotland, Holland, 
France, Switzerland, and the rising England across 
the Atlantic." 1 John Calvin was the "sharp edge 
of Protestantism" drawn against two forces ; Roman 
Catholicism, more virile than ever in its new organ- 
ization and moral revival, and the pagan impulse 
which swept in with the abuse of the freedom of the 
Reformation. Calvin's discipline was as potent as 
his theology. 

The most permanent contributions of Calvin's 
genius lay less in the line of theology than of states- 
manship. Calvin cherished the belief that the Ref- 
ormation could be accomplished only by regener- 
ation, by separation, and by negation. His change 
of view-point with regard to the Church in which 
he saw that men could conform with giving up 
their sins, his experiences at Geneva, where he 



1 Morley's Cromwell, p. 47. 



Prologue. 



7 



found preachings, tumults, and image-breakings 
with no true improvement, brought him face to face 
with his "master problem, namely, by what means 
could he best secure the expression of a changed 
faith in a changed life." 1 Calvin's chief title in 
modern history is that of the statesman, not of the 
theologian. And we agree with the scholar of Ox- 
ford in his statement that we have less cause to be 
grateful to Calvin for the system called Calvinism 
than for the Church he organized. His theology 
was derivative and less original than his polity, 
yet he so interpreted the former as to make the 
latter its logical outcome. 

iDr. Fairbairn. Reformation. Camb. Mod. History, 2, 364. 



Note;. — The manuscript was in the hands of the printer 
before the issue of Professor Williston Walker's "John 
Calvin," by Putnam. References to this volume, an admir- 
able one, have been possible in the proof sheets: 

R. T. S. 





r\TsJ tp i? tvt nr o 
CUJN I rLJN 1 o 










CHAPTEI 




PAGE 


I. 


Calvin's Youth, - 


II 


II. 


The Age and its Problems, 


26 


III. 


Wanderings, - 


- 42 


IV. 


Geneva before Calvin, - 


6l 


V. 


First Sojourn in Geneva, - 


- 76 


VI. 


Years of Exile, 


9 I 


VII. 


Return to Geneva, - 


- 112 


VIII. 


The New Discipline, 


128 


IX. 


Calvin and Servetus, - 


- 145 


X. 


The Man — Last Days, 


l6l 


XI. 


Statesmanship, 


182 



John Calvin: The Statesman 



CHAPTER I. 

CALVIN'S YOUTH. 

Threescore; miles northeast of Paris, on the 
railroad to Brussels, at the foot and on the slopes 
of a hill, is Noyon. Through it there runs a small 
stream which joins the Oise a little farther down 
its course. The town was an ancient cathedral 
center, and on account of its many churches, con- 
vents, and priests was called Noyon-la-Sainte. 
There, on July 10, 1509, was born John Calvin. 
His ancestors, according to M. he Franc, were 
fishermen, or, as other narrate, bargemen, who lived 
on the river Oise. His father, Gerard Cauvin, or 
Calvin, of stern and severe character, became a 
bourgeois of Noyon in 1497, rose to a position of 
responsibility as apostolic secretary to the Bishop 
of Noyon, and became intimate with leading fam- 
ilies of the neighborhood. He married the daughter 
of one of the prominent citizens of the town, L,e 

11 



i2 John Calvin: The Statesman. 

Franc, who had a good fortune. The bride of 
Gerard, Jeanne L,e Franc, was handsome and pious. 
Though she died young, she lived long enough to 
impress her ideas upon the precocious boy, and is 
said to have taken him, after the custom of the day, 
upon various pilgrimages to near-by shrines, On 
her death the father took another wife, of whom 
nothing is known. 

John Calvin had four brothers and two sisters, 
of whom two brothers died young, while two were 
provided with benefices through the father's influ- 
ence. Charles, the oldest, was made chaplain of 
the cathedral in 1518, and the younger, Antoine, 
chaplain of Tournerolle, but later, with a sister, 
Marie, embraced the evangelical faith and followed 
their reformer-brother to Geneva. The other sister 
appears to have remained in the Catholic Church. 
His brother Charles turned heretic or infidel, was 
excommunicated in 1531, and died October 1, 1537, 
and for refusing the sacrament on his deathbed was 
buried between the four pillars of a gibbet the year 
after John announced his system to the world, "as 
if to repeat the startling contrast of Esau and Jacob, 
reprobation and election from the same womb." 

The legend of John's having been educated at a 
charity school has been abandoned. His father 
was a man of importance, and obtained Church 
preferments for his sons. At the age of twelve 
John secured a "benefice," or living, the rent of 
some church property lying at Eppeville, a name 



Calvin's Youth. 



13 



he afterwards used as a pseudonym. September 
29, 1527, he became curate of Saint Martin de 
Martheville, and on the 5th of June he exchanged 
this for a better one at Pont l'Eveque. The sons 
were well educated in a college of Noyon, where 
John had for companions the children of the Seig- 
neur of Mommor. With them he went to Paris, 
August, 1523, to enter college, living with his uncle 
Richard near the Church of Saint Germain l'Auxer- 
rois. From the bell tower of this old church a half 
hundred years afterwards rang out the doom of the 
Huguenots on Saint Bartholomew's night. Little 
did any one dream of the mighty influence of the 
thin-faced lad who daily walked under the shadow 
of that tower. He was known as a studious book- 
worm. His intimate friend and follower, Beza, 
said of him that during this period he was "relig- 
ious after a remarkable fashion, and a severe censor 
of all the vices of his companions." He early got 
the name of "The Accusative Case," 1 a nickname 
suggestive of the leadership in morals and scholar- 
ship of a French lad in school life nearly four cen- 
turies ago. 

A quarrel between his father and the Chapter 
of Noyon may have had its influence in chilling 
the warmth of John's affection for his home Church. 
"At the bottom of it," says M. Le Franc, "are 



l Walker, p. 42, questions the real foundation of this; he cred- 
its it to Calvin's " renegade one-time friend," Francois Baudoin, later 
his calumnist. 



i4 John Calvin: Tut Statesman. 

money difficulties. Gerard Calvin was embarrassed 
in his affairs, refused to render his accounts to the 
Chapter, and put himself in complete opposition to 
it. The influence of this quarrel on the mind of 
the future reformer must have been considerable." 
How much of this is speculation may be matter for 
profitless discussion. However, the father was ex- 
communicated by the Chapter, fell ill, and died, his 
son having come home from Paris to bid him fare- 
well and do the last filial offices. The fact that he 
was buried in unconsecrated ground did not appeal 
favorably to the proudly sensitive young collegian 
from Paris. There was not lacking in the family 
a substantial background of anti-papal feeling, and 
though we can not know how extensive this was, 
it is not hard to conceive that John reflected the 
spirit of his family and of his native Picardy. The 
state of this section of France throws some light 
upon the growing antipathy to Rome on the part 
of the young scholar. Picardy was open to all the 
winds that blew across the Rhine. Robert Olivetan 
was a Picard, and a kinsman of Calvin. He had 
become a friend in Strassburg of Martin Bucer, 
a reformer intimate with Luther and of marked 
influence among men of the new faith. Picardy 
was celebrated for its love of contention, or say 
the principle of free speech, and the Bishop of 
Noyon and the Chapter were engaged in a "per- 
petual quarrel." So the fitting environment was 
ready for the nursing of a reformer. 



Calvin's Youth. 



15 



Calvin was not an accident. The desire for a 
better state of things in Church and State was 
strong in his region. The city became for awhile 
a sort of headquarters for the reformers in the 
north of France. In the persecution which at- 
tended the zeal of the inquisitor-general, striving 
to recover Noyon to the Mother Church, the clergy 
stood together with the plain people, and forced the 
aristocrats to yield to the established order of the 
old faith, and so Noyon fell back into the arms of 
Rome. Thirty years after the death of Calvin, 
Cardinal Alexander de Medicis passed through 
Noyon and asked to be shown the home of Calvin. 
He then inquired if there were any Protestants in 
the town. His guide said: "Not a single one!" 
This was doubtless an exaggeration, but it ex- 
pressed the fact that Noyon had exhausted its 
tendency to reform in furnishing to the world one 
reformer. 

At the age of fourteen Calvin entered the Col- 
lege de la Marche. His great instructor in Latin 
was Mathurin Cordier, to whom he afterwards 
dedicated his Commentary on First Thessalonians. 
Cordier afterwards followed his pupil to Geneva, 
and was appointed director of the College of Ge- 
neva, where he died the same year with Calvin. 
From the College de la Marche Calvin was trans- 
ferred to the more strictly ecclesiastical College de 
Montaigu, and there he studied philosophy and 
theology under a learned Spaniard. To this same 



16 John Calvin: Ths Statesman. 



college came, in February, 1528, Ignatius Loyola, 
in preparation for his life-work, in which his most 
exacting duties were to be found in antagonism to 
the toil of Calvin. 

We can not discover anything unusual or spec- 
tacular in the college career of the young student 
from Noyon, save that he easily distanced all his 
rivals. He seems to have had no heart for the riot- 
ous hours of the young collegians of Paris, and 
gave the police no trouble in their efforts to main- 
tain order when "town and gown" met in a mid- 
night brawl. He was reticent, proud, religious, 
and studious beyond measure or wisdom. Beza 
says he was even then "doctor potius quam aud- 
itor" — teacher rather than hearer. 

At first his father had longed for his gifted son 
to become priest, but changed his purpose. The son 
said: "My father saw that the study of law gener- 
ally enriched those who pursued it, and this hope 
made him suddenly change his mind with regard 
to me. And thus it happened that being withdrawn 
from the study of philosophy in order to learn the 
law, I compelled myself to learn the law, so as to 
obey my father's will. But all the while God in 
His secret providence made me finally turn my 
head in another direction." M. Guizot is inclined 
to believe that his father's will was not the principal 
guiding motive in Calvin's resolution. For when 
he began his studies in Paris he was a special stu- 
dent of Cordier, a sympathetic onlooker at the 



Calvin's Youth. 



17 



time of the rising tide of reform. Also his fellow- 
countryman, Olivetan, was moving with the new 
current of religion. Such influences could not have 
failed to tell upon the mind of Calvin. When in 
1529 he abandoned the Church for the law, he 
went to Orleans and Bourges. One of his teachers 
was Pierre de TEstoile, a learned jurist; another, 
Alciate of Milan, an elegant scholar in ancient liter- 
ature ; while more important still, another was Mel- 
chior Wolmar, eminent in Greek, who read Demos- 
thenes with his pupils for a time, and then turned 
to the New Testament. Calvin became the favorite 
pupil of Wolmar. His industry and abstemious- 
ness, his freedom from any wildness to which others 
were inclined, and his excesses in studying left for 
years a notable memory in Orleans, and at the same 
time laid the foundation for his plague for the rest 
of his life — dyspepsia. 

He was made Bachelor of Laws at Orleans, 
February 14, 1531, and on leaving the university 
was offered the degree of Doctor of Laws without 
the usual fees. Already his rank as a scholar is 
exhibited in the fact that when the question of the 
divorce of Henry VIII was referred to the scholars 
on the Continent, Calvin was consulted. He ex- 
pressed himself against the lawfulness of marriage 
with a brother's widow. In the summer of 1531 
he went to Noyon to see his father depart this life, 
and returned to Paris with his brother Antoine. 
Still deepening his knowledge of the classics, he 



1 8 John Calvin: The: Statesman. 



does not seem to have had any thought of breaking 
with the Catholic Church. Nor does he discuss re- 
ligious matters in correspondence with his intimate 
friends, like Francois Daniel. Daniel had asked 
him to introduce his sister to the superior of a con- 
vent, and Calvin wrote back that he had done so, 
adding that he had given her a few admonitions, 
as that she should not trust in her own strength, 
but put all confidence in God. 

Financial embarrassment compelled him to bor- 
row two crowns from his friend, Duchemin, to 
whom he expressed the hope of speedy repayment, 
yet would none the less remain a debtor in grati- 
tude for timely aid. The peculiar maturity of his 
mind, his avoidance of a share in the noisy excite- 
ments so common to student life in his day, his 
intimacy with his teachers, and his high moral char- 
acter marked him as a rare personality. The charge 
of selfish coldness which has dripped from the pens 
of writers like Audin disappears in the light of the 
knowledge of his warm friendships. Three young 
men of like mind with himself were Duchemin, 
Connam, and Daniel. While they felt the need of 
reform, they refused to break with the Romish 
Church, nor do Calvin's letters to them at this 
period show traces of discontent with the ancient 
communion. But when his mind began to consider 
the question of separation, no stronger proof of his 
capacity for friendship can be found than the fact 
that though his leaving appeared inevitable, he and 



Calvin's Youth. 



19 



they remained friends. The first letter in Bonnet's 
four octavo volumes is to Daniel, and as late as 
1559 Daniel renewed the correspondence with Cal- 
vin, and entrusted to him the education of his son 
Pierre. Calvin's first work was announced by the 
author to Daniel in the words, "Tandem jacta est 
alea." Caesar had said just before crossing the 
Rubicon, "Let the die be cast." Calvin could not 
have meant by his half-playful adaptation of the 
old phrase with which the Roman had turned over 
a new leaf of history, that he was about to do the 
same. And yet it fell not far from it. Calvin was 
still a Humanist when he published his Commentary 
on Seneca's "De Clementia." He sent a copy to 
Erasmus, calling him "the honor and delight of the 
world of letters." This was his first book. In it 
there is evidence of a Stoic quality of mind which 
never left him. He published it at his own expense, 
April, 1532. In it may be seen "his characteristic 
love for the nobler type of Stoicism, great famil- 
iarity with Greek and Roman literature, masterly 
Latinity, rare exegetical skill, clear and sound judg- 
ment," 1 but with no allusion to Christianity. Cal- 
vin's "De Clementia" has been considered by some 
to have the aim of an apologist, as if he hoped to 
save his fellows of the new faith from the wrath 
of the king ; and to this Henry, Dorner, and Guizot 
give their names ; but others like Stahelin deny it. 
Schaff says, "It is purely the work of a humanist, 



l Dr. Schaff. 



20 John Calvin: The: Statesman. 

not of an apologist or a reformer." It is not ad- 
dressed to the king, and in the implied comparison 
of the king to Nero Calvin could not have hoped 
to allay any bitter feeling in the royal heart towards 
the Protestants. The production is that of a bril- 
liant young scholar, an admirer of the ancient clas- 
sics, a soul tempered by the finer influences contrib- 
uted to civilization by Stoicism. Letters, and not 
religion, at this time in life held him in charm. 

Suddenly just as a notable career, one marked 
by the devotion of men of letters, and the favors 
of magnates of the Church, began to dawn before 
him, he joined the ranks of the reformers. He says 
it was a "sudden conversion" (snbito conversio). 
But this can not mean that the new direction of all 
his life currents was without thought or conscious 
battle. He could not have been ignorant, as an 
educated man, and one whose marvelous precocity 
attracted attention in every circle he joined, of the 
stir of the Reformation, favored by the men of let- 
ters and opposed by the clergy at large. He soon 
appeared as an interpreter of the Scriptures, and 
his extraordinary familiarity with them, his insight 
into their spiritual bent, tell the story of preparation 
for the change. There was both slow approach 
and sudden illumination. While he says, "God 
Himself produced the change. He instantly sub- 
dued my heart to obedience," yet we must think 
that this "sudden conversion" was the result, the 
climax, of much previous severe thought, and pos- 



Calvin's Youth. 



21 



sibly of struggle. The question is wrapped in ad- 
ditional difficulty for the reason that Calvin does 
not mention the time, place, or circumstances of the 
decisive change, he Franc puts the time in the 
latter part of the year 1532, when Calvin was in 
Orleans, or possibly in Paris. 1 According to Beza 
the conversion took place as far back as 1528, or 
even 1527. Bolsec and Audin, whose narratives 
are in spots the veriest libels, trace the great change 
to wounded ambition, but in utter ignorance of 
Calvin's character. 

It will be recalled that in telling his friend Dan- 
iel of his work on "Clemency" he had said "the 
die was cast." None the less fitting is the phrase 
to describe the present turn of life, but now he 
throws himself on the "mercy" of God. In mem- 
orable words he discloses his wretchedness of soul, 
not long after the issue of his book on "Clemency." 
"After my heart had long been prepared for the 
most earnest self-examination, on a sudden the full 
knowledge of the truth, like a bright light, dis- 
closed to me the abyss of errors in which I was 
weltering, the sin and shame with which I was de- 
filed. A horror seized my soul, when I became con- 
scious of my wretchedness and of the more terrible 
misery that was before me. And what was left, 
O Lord, for me, miserable and abject, but with 
tears and cries of supplication to abjure the old 
life which Thou condemned and to flee into Thy 



1 With this Walker agrees, p. 96. 



22 



John Calvin: The Statesman. 



path?" He tells us that he had failed to find in- # 
ward peace through the usual methods of the 
Church. "Only one haven of salvation is there for 
our souls, and that is the compassion of God, which 
is offered to us in Christ." Calvin was now a free 
man inwardly. And if he had any doubts concern- 
ing his outward course they were soon dispelled. 
He, like Caesar, was the man to cross Rubicons 
with a whole heart. Martin Luther's conversion 
was no more significant, nor was that of John "Wes- 
ley, for the long future of the Reformation and of 
Constitutional liberty hung upon the changed life 
of this young Frenchman of twenty-three. He had 
not been immoral ; he now became evangelical. He 
had not lacked in Latinity, reading his favorite 
Cicero through annually; but now he lifted the 
Bible far above all books. He had never been a 
lover of misrule, nor a destructionist, for he re- 
vered the Church of his fathers ; but now he became 
the mightiest builder of the age. like all truly great 
men, loving order, and stretched a long arm out 
over the generations to come. 

The shy scholar becomes the refuge of troubled 
souls. He had found the key to liberty, and men 
came to him for the opening of the door from their 
prison houses of doubt and sin. Though he tried 
to escape the numbers that thronged his place of 
residence, he could not fail to see that God was 
about to use him for the help of his fellows, and to 
those who sought his counsel he gave the keynote 



Calvin's Youth. 



23 



of his theology and his piety in the words with 
which he began and closed his exhortations : "If 
God be for us, who can be against us ?" 

Calvin had not been ordained priest in the 
Roman Catholic Church, and had never read mass, 
though he had early received the tonsure, destined 
as he was for the priesthood. Like Melanchthon 
he was a layman. It was not until 1536 that he 
fully entered the ranks of ordained preachers, when 
by the election of presbyters and council, and with 
the consent of the whole people, he was chosen 
pastor and began his "regular" ministry. He had 
no hierarchy back of him, but a democracy. 

The crisis and breach with Rome came in 1533. 
The king had been offended because of an insult 
offered to his sister by the Sorbonne in their con- 
demnation of her "Mirror of a Sinful Soul," — a 
mystical reverie, which omitted to mention purga- 
tory and the intercession of saints, and was there- 
fore judged to have denied them. Over this there 
grew up a division between the liberals and the 
traditionalists, and a slight rising of the tide towards 
a moderate reform was apparent. Several preach- 
ers whose sympathies leaned towards reformation 
were permitted to preach in Paris pulpits. The ' 
new rector of the university was Nicholas Cop, 
the son of a distinguished physician, and a warm 
friend of Calvin. All Saints' Day brought with it 
the duty of delivering the annual oration, and a 
month after his election, November 1, 1533, before 



24 John Calvin: The: Statesman. 

a large audience in the Church of the Mathurins, 
the new rector spoke after a fashion to injure him- 
self and his friend, John Calvin. Cop had asked 
Calvin to write the address or to make substantial 
contributions to it, and the result was, as Beza tells 
the incident, "very different kind of oration from 
the ordinary one, for he spoke of religious matters 
with great freedom." In the speech Calvin made 
a plea for the New Testament kind of reformation, 
and boldly attacked the musty theologians of the 
day as a set of sophists, ignorant of the true Gos- 
pel. "They teach nothing of faith, nothing of the 
love of God, nothing of the remission of grace, 
nothing of justification, or if they do so, they per- 
vert and undermine it all by their laws and soph- 
istries. I beg of you, who are here present, not to 
tolerate any longer these heresies and abuses." 1 

The word was out and could not be recalled. 
It was sufficient to rouse against Cop all the ire of 
the conservatives. The Sorbonne interpreted the 
address as a manifesto against the Holy Church, 
and condemned it to the flames. The rector of a 
month fled to Basel. Calvin fell into their accu- 
sation also, so we judge his share in the speech was 
not a secret. He took temporary refuge in the 
dwelling of a vine-dresser in the Fauburg St. Vic- 
tor, changed his clothing, was let down from a 



l Calvin's share in Cop's Address is asserted by many authori- 
ties, and denied by as many more. 



Calvin's Youth. 



25 



window, Pauline fashion, and escaped from Paris 
carrying a hoe upon his shoulder to perfect his dis- 
guise. The police were quick upon his heels, yet 
found nothing save his books and papers. 
John Calvin now becomes a wanderer. 



CHAPTER II. 



THE AGE AND ITS PROBLEMS. 

Before: taking up the all too meager incidents 
of Calvin's life in his wanderings, we must attempt 
to familiarize our minds with the age in which he 
was to play such a distinguished part. He touched 
so many lives, the most illustrious of the century, 
kings, bishops, scholars, statesmen, the opponent of 
some, the pride of some, the spiritual father of 
some, feared and hated and loved from the Tiber 
to the Thames, and credited with greatness by all 
who were qualified to give any decision, that one 
will surely go astray if the background of his emi- 
nent services be not painted in. 

That "great and happy thing" which men call 
the Renaissance was a timely recovery of the glories 
and charm of Greek and Roman culture. One of 
the most brilliant products of this spirit as it swept 
over Europe bears the stamp of Calvin's literary 
genius upon it, his first appearance in the field of 
letters. The glorious air first breathed upon Italy, 
then upon Germany, France, and England. The 
sixteenth century rises to splendid proportions, full- 
orbed and far-shining. If men did not all see fully, 

26 



The Ag£ and its Problems. 



27 



they gazed eagerly. Ulrich von Hutten, rejoicing 
in the new light and filling his lines with the fresh 
enthusiasm for Germany, and the passion against 
Rome, cried out: "O century when studies bloom 
and spirits awake; it is happiness to live in thee!" 
Stars of the first magnitude in nearly all lines of 
mental activity and practical daring glow with un- 
diminished splendor, even to eyes that find it diffi- 
cult to compass the glory of the twentieth century. 
It is the age of Luther and Raphael, both born the 
same year, 1483 ; of Erasmus and Michelangelo, 
one the master of the new learning and the other 
the noblest artist of his time ; the day of Columbus 
and Cabot; of Leonardo da Vinci; of Francois 
Rabelais ; of Vittoria Colonna, Henry VIII, Charles 
V, Chevalier Bayard, Magellan and Loyola; of 
Zwingli, Coligny, and William of Orange ; of John 
Knox, Francis I, Melanchthon, Titian, Correggio, 
Leo X, Cortez and Copernicus; an age plethoric 
with discoverers, artists, architects, sculptors, states- 
men, theologians, soldiers, thinkers, a noble band, 
men of truths, men of errors, men of great parts 
and of famous deeds. John Calvin holds high rank 
in this illustrious company. 

In the expressive phrase of Guizot, "Two con- 
trary winds were blowing over Europe at this 
period, one carrying with it skepticism and licen- 
tiousness, while the other breathed only Christian 
faith and the severest morality." It was an age 
of intoxication, of reconstruction, of conflict. The 



28 John Calvin: The Statesman. 



spread of the literary spirit had serious conse- 
quences for the Church, though it was not at first 
clearly seen. Along with the revival of letters 
there came a renewed study of the Fathers of the 
Church, and, above all, of the Scriptures. Human- 
ism was welcomed to different lands with somewhat 
varying emphasis. In Italy it bred a skepticism 
which concerned itself little enough with the- moral 
betterment of the Church and society ; in Germany 
the study of the classics did not corrupt minds like 
that of Reuchlin, and bent itself in sympathy with 
the effort to found the new University of Witten- 
berg, only seven years before the birth of Calvin; 
in England men like Colet and More smiled at the 
dawn with a double joy, that of the saint as well 
as that of the student ; and later on both for those 
who stayed in the Roman Church and for those 
who revolted, the new learning was a fortress and 
strong tower, for in its arsenal the Catholic and the 
Reformer, the followers of Loyola and of Calvin 
alike sharpened their blades for fierce encounter. 

The failure of the Popes to use the Renaissance 
with a view to the moral improvement of human 
society as well as its aesthetic advance tells the 
story of a double loss. The over-emphasis of art- 
loving popes upon the art products of their day, 
especially in the early decades of the century, re- 
veals a one-sided quality of soul which in the end 
lost the very good at which wealth and taste and 
skill were aiming. Pope Julius II represented the 



The Age and its Problems. 



29 



zenith of the effort to secure for the Church the 
magnificent service of the art of the Renaissance. 
He had the three greatest minds that any ruler 
could hope for. Bramante, "perhaps the most uni- 
versal and gifted mind that ever used its mastery 
over architecture," planned in St. Peter's the type 
of the majestic extension of the Church. In the 
roof of the Sistine Chapel Michelangelo depicted 
the return of mankind to God, aided not only by 
Judaism, but also by Graeco-Roman paganism, 
showing a positive relationship between classical 
antiquity and Christianity. Above all, in the four 
pictures by Raphael, painted in the Camera dell a 
Segnatura the year of Calvin's birth, can be seen 
the aspiration of the soul of man in each of its 
faculties, man going Godward by the aesthetic per- 
ceptions, by philosophy, by Church order, and by 
theology. The Papacy of the Renaissance led Eu- 
rope in art. This Luther could not see. What he 
saw was a "Holy City" forsaking the Decalogue. 
But its neglect of morals led to a decline in art. 

Dr. Kraus, of Munich, a late authority in this 
field, believes 1 that the decline began with the fol- 
lies and frailties of Leo X, who, though his reign 
has been compared to that of Augustus, passed his 
life in self-indulgence, while the north of Europe 
was bursting the bonds which bound it to Rome. 
As far back as 1498 Niccolo Macchiavelli saw in 
the flames about Savonarola no prospect of reform 



lCamb. Mod. Hist. vol. 2. 



30 John Calvin: The: Statesman. 

from Rome. And though a better man came with 
the election of Adrian VI, a "Dutch saint," who 
could not understand the newly-discovered Lao- 
coon, saying, "These are heathen idols," he failed 
to reconcile the Italian Renaissance with the con- 
science of the Germanic world. 

In 1523 Clement VII was elected Pope, but as 
a contemporary remarked, "He lost courage and 
let go the rudder." Vacillating between Charles V 
and Francis I he beheld his holy city sacked by the 
rough soldiery of Charles after the battle of Pavia, 
perhaps the most important military event of the 
century. In 1533 he gave his great-niece, yet in 
her teens, to the royal house of France, a terrible 
gift, for thirty-eight years afterwards she contrived 
to flood the gutters of Paris with the blood of 
Huguenots on St. Bartholomew's Night. During 
his pontificate the unity of the Catholic Church was 
destroyed, and half of Europe found another cen- 
ter of its faith. Italian corruption, a fatal con- 
fusion of politics and religion, the incapacity of a 
man who was neither venal, nor proud, nor licen- 
tious, wrought out a bitter atonement for the sins 
of a selfish predecessor. The harmonization of 
mediaeval with modern thought and life, and the 
perpetuation of an unbroken Catholicism, all mis- 
carried because all strong moral force was gone 
from the Italian people. Italy had burned its last 
prophet in the Piazza delta Signore at Florence. 
It had also blown out the candle of its glory as 



The Age and its Problems. 31 



the leader of European culture. Painting and sculp- 
ture took a downward path after the death of 
Raphael and Leonardo. "Not only the Muses and 
the Graces wept by Raphael's grave, the whole 
Julian epoch was buried with him." 1 

When the election of Alessandro Farnese as 
Paul III, 1534, inaugurated the Counter-Reforma- 
tion, it proved too late to save to Rome its distinc- 
tion of being both the intellectual and the religious 
.center of Christian Europe. The results were fatal 
to the hope of a universal ecclesiasticism which 
Bramante suggested in his plans for St. Peter's, 
and Raphael glorified in his cartoons. It has been 
remarked by Newman that the greatest misfortune 
lay, and still lies, in the fact that the Latin races 
never realized, and do not even yet realize, what 
they have lost in the Germanic defection. Yet it is as 
striking a fact that the Reformed Church in all its 
branches discovered its bridge of transfer from the 
bank of Mediaeval autocracy to that of Modern 
democracy in a Latin of the Latins, through whose 
high character, magnificent culture, and persistent 
will it was enabled to offset the aroused energy of 
Rome, its quickened conscience, its giant organiza- 
tion with an energy, a consecration, and a concep- 
tion of the worth of the individual man able to 
withstand the concentrated pressure of the whole 
Roman Catholic world. 

A significant difference appears in the symbols 



l Camb. Mod. Hist. 2, 28. 



32 John Calvin: The; Statesman. 

of the two opponents. The old was getting itself 
splendidly fashioned in marble; the new clearly 
printed on the flying page; for with the building 
of St. Peter's on the banks of the Tiber, and with 
the issue of the "Institutes" of John Calvin at Ge- 
neva, we reach the two giant conceptions of the 
century. The black and white page contrast oddly 
enough with the golden dome. The one is objec- 
tive, the other appeals to the inner eye. The one is 
the proudest monument of religious institutional- 
ism, the other beats its exacting notes for an irre- 
sistible march into the future. Within the walls 
of the Church are assembled the most sacred relics 
of the Catholic faith. From Raphael to Canova, 
Art has done her utmost to perpetuate the elaborate 
symbolism of the Roman Catholic Church, accumu- 
lated in the passing of a thousand years. In the 
pages of Calvin, Logic reached the limit in mighty 
effort to exalt the idea of the Sovereignty of God. 
St. Peter's is the conclusion of an impulse which 
led men for so many centuries to express their re- 
ligious feelings by sensuous images of the grand, 
the obscure, and the terrible. "It represents the 
absorption of the religious by the aesthetic element, 
which is the sure sign that the religious function 
of architecture had terminated. The age of the 
cathedrals had passed. The age of the printing- 
press had begun." 1 

The two extremes of the French Renaissance 

l r,ecky, Rationalism ; i. 267. 



The: Age; and its Problems. 



33 



were the theologian and the satirist. Over against 
John Calvin stood Francois Rabelais. Of no other 
two men of their age have so many contradictory 
opinions been held. A modern Frenchman, Vol- 
taire, heir to the scholarship in which they both 
reveled, as skeptical as the one and more critical 
than the other in his assaults upon the Church, 
more decent than Rabelais, less so than Calvin, 
declared that the works of the great humorist were 
"the most filthy ordure that a drunken monk could 
possibly vomit." He did indeed make a coarse 
picture of the corruption of the times in monastery 
and castle, not without grim and terrible satire. He 
was at once sensualist, scholar, and skeptic, yet he 
remained in the Church. Coleridge declared him 
to be among the deepest minds as well as the bold- 
est thinker of his age. Charles Kingsley found him 
strangely "evangelical." His versatility of humor 
has led some to place him in the class with Shakes- 
peare. By no stretch of the imagination can he be 
reckoned in sympathy with Calvin, nor can Calvin 
be thought of as looking with indifference upon 
the riot with which Rabelais has peopled his pages. 
Yet in their scorn of the life of the flesh to which 
the monks devoted their days and nights, both men 
represented the changing mind of the new day, 
the view of a consistent life which men were every- 
where demanding of those who handled sacred 
things. 

Yet the wit of Rabelais was utterly lacking in 
3 



34 John Calvin: The Statesman. 



restraint, and his chidings were without conscience, 
for while he scorned the frauds and follies of the 
papal court and lashed without limit of decency the 
sins of the clergy, he continued to live in their com- 
munion. The absolution of Clement VII and the 
license of Francis I secured him the privileges of 
a chartered libertine. He 'became the Momus of his 
time, and his entire possession of the double spirit 
of France, its love of logic and its love of life, its 
learning and its licentiousness, made him at once 
a communicant and a bacchanal. 

In Calvin we have the antidote to Rabelais. If 
the one was an ascetic, the other was a satyr. The 
one drank before, during, and after writing; the 
other was content with a repast of bread and water 
once in thirty-six hours. The one was lord of mis- 
rule in tavern or monastery ; the other the lord 
of order in Geneva. The one wrote a farce for 
merriment, the other a tragedy which man finds 
too serious for laughter. For the man of Geneva 
life was a mission, and logic a flame. The one was 
all too short for folly, the other too sure for doubt. 
Thus in the sublime conviction that he fully under- 
stood God's will for the world, Calvin endeavored 
to translate his world of reason into one of prac- 
tice, faithful to the last link of what he believed an 
indissoluble logic. 

The Rabelaisian spirit could not abide in Ge- 
neva while Calvin ruled there. The two worlds 
were mutually exclusive. "The demoniac of Ge- 



The Age and its Probi^ms. 



35 



neva," as the humorist called the puritan, was the 
mightiest in his realm, and saved it from the de- 
moralization to which the ebb-tide towards pagan- 
ism was carrying it. 

In another direction the demand for such a 
leader as Calvin is most notable. In the definite 
theological retrogression from Lutheranism, even 
before Luther's death, the battle lines were drawn 
not between Lutheranism and Jesuitism, but be- 
tween Jesuitism and Calvinism. In their leadership, 
their organization, their emphasis upon education 
they were not unlike. Each consecrated everything 
to the purpose of its life and mission. Each tested 
to the full the other's power of offense and defense. 
"It is here," says Dr. A. V. G. Allen, "that Calvin- 
ism finds its place in the philosophy of history. 
Its merit lay in its ability to resist Jesuitism on its 
own ground. It did not hesitate to identify Cal- 
vin's opinions with the divine will. In this respect 
its audacity may be equaled, but is not surpassed 
by the disciples of Loyola. Calvinism was the fight- 
ing mood of the Reformation." 1 

That we may give full measure to this concep- 
tion of the place of Calvinism, we must know some- 
what more of the Spanish soldier, pilgrim, saint, 
and organizer whose work it was to save the Ro- 
man Church from the assaults of the man of Ge- 
neva. The story of the wounding of Loyola on 
the ramparts of Pampeluna, and the collapse of the 



l Continuity of Christian Thought, p. 337, 



36 John Calvin: The Statesman. 



defense when he fell with both legs shattered by 
a cannon shot is well known. His nerve was equal 
to the pain of having one leg broken again on find- 
ing it had been ill set, when he had a protruding 
bone sawed off, while he calmly watched the sur- 
geon's work. On his sick bed he asked for a ro- 
mance. None was at hand, and instead he was 
handed a life of Christ and the lives of some saints. 
The ambitions of the soldier were changed, and he 
rose from the sick bed another man. He offered 
himself as a distributor of alms, and tried to go to 
Palestine pilgrim-wise, staff in hand. Finding that 
he lacked much to fit him for his life duty, he 
turned himself at thirty-three years of age to the 
school bench. He was far behind Calvin in his 
Latin declensions, nor was he an apt pupil. He 
had not yet taken holy orders, and by his zeal he 
made himself "distinctly odious." 1 He goes to the 
University of Paris, and enrolls as a freshman, 
February, 1528. He mingled in proportions dic- 
tated not by good judgment so much as by an iron 
will, the most lofty aims, the most austere practices, 
and the drudgery of difficult study. He finally 
overcame all obstructions and took his degree of 
Master of Arts in 1534. Of more aid to him than 
his degree were his six chosen companions, each 
one of whom he had won individually. Never was 
there a band of devoted followers picked to more 
clearly defined aims. Though the men he gathered 

1 Hughes' Iyoyola. 24. 



The: Age; and its Probi^ms. 



37 



around him were unlike, he bred in them the rarest 
devotion to his ideal, enlisting the courtier Xavier, 
ambitious for letters; the youthful prodigy Lajmez, 
Doctor of Philosophy, and the tender shepherd boy, 
Lefevre, to lay aside self in the cause of the society. 
A French historian has said: "Loyola could apply 
to himself admirably well that proverb which says, 
'When a Spaniard is driving a nail into the wall, 
and the hammer breaks, the Spaniard will drive it 
in with his head I" Of none was this truer than of 
Loyola, who counted no cost to get his plans to 
work, through to the end of days. 

On the 27th of September, 1540, the Society of 
Jesus received from the Pope its bull of confirma- 
tion, and the order was ready for the work of cap- 
turing the next generation, to check the decadence 
of the Church, and to offset the increasing might 
of Calvinism. Loyola died in 1556, and Calvin in 
1564, but they had laid down before their going 
the lines of the grand strategy on which the battle 
lasted far on into succeeding decades. Their fol- 
lowers made for the cities, where they planted their 
schools. Of Loyola some one wrote, contrasting 
him with other Catholic orders: 

"Bernardus valles, montes Benedictus amabat, 
Oppida Franciscus, magnas Ignatius urbes " 

That is: The monks of Clairvaux loved their val- 
leys; the Benedictines their mountain-tops; the 



38 John Calvin: The Statesman. 



Franciscans the rural towns; Ignatius the great 
cities. 

Action and reaction came with startling sudden- 
ness. The very year of England's breach with the 
papacy, Loyola took his Master's degree at Paris. 
The birth of this order on French soil was ominous 
for the future of the Reformation in France. Even 
before the establishment of the plans of Loyola 
the Protestants had endured martyrdom under di- 
rect encouragement of the king. They faced perse- 
cution with wonderful courage, yet were not able 
to cope with the rising energy of Romanism, unless 
some equal might should direct in their behalf the 
uncertain future. While Francis I was crowding 
to the wall his subjects who were professing the 
new faith, and burning alive the simple Vaudians 
of Provence who dared to break with Rome, the 
Reformation was at a standstill in Italy; in Ger- 
many it had laid the foundations of war between 
the emperor and the Protestant princes, and Lu- 
ther's closing days were made sad on account of 
fraternal strife; the death of Henry VIII threw 
England back into the folds of the Roman Church 
and left his daughter to light the fires of Smith- 
field ; Rome was renewing her vigor and preparing 
for advance not only in Europe, but in the New 
World she had lately claimed for her own. It was 
a day of genuine alarm for the Protestants. Luther 
had raised a storm, but was not the leader to con- 
trol its fierce energies in the salvation of the reform 
for which he had given his life. 



The: Age and its Problems. 39 



In special, Luther's methods of securing the 
results of his first efforts were not to the liking 
of a large part of the new forces engaged in the 
exodus from Rome. History was slowly tending 
towards democracy. Luther failed to implant in 
the minds of his host the principle of self-sustenta- 
tion. He leaned too heavily upon the princes. His 
congregations were but half emancipated from old 
doctrines and old relations with authority. They 
held truth with an alloy of falsehood. It was a 
time when half measures were sure to prove un- 
equal to the tremendous task. To quench the fires 
of Philip of Spain, to raise men in Scotland or 
France to face the princes of the House of Lor- 
raine, or to match the craft of Jesuitism they 
needed a sharper definition of differences from 
Rome, and a closer alliance with the new life of the 
modern world expressing itself in forms of pop- 
ular control, and a simpler texture of organization 
with which to front the age-long power of the 
Popes. These did not come from Wittenberg. 
While Luther resisted forces which would have 
crushed weaker men, and goes to the end of time 
one of the immortals of human progress, it yet 
remains that he held to beliefs that a more logical 
intellect would have disowned, and cherished cus- 
toms which a more radical reformer would have 
surrendered. He seems himself to have felt that 
he had not touched the secret springs of a perma- 
nent victory, and the nearer he drew to his close 



40 John Calvin: The: Statesman. 



the more it became evident that no adequate pro- 
vision for a permanent expansion of Protestant 
doctrine and practice was to be hoped for under the 
direction of the great German. 

Then it must be remembered that as the more 
eager rebels against the Roman Church pushed 
forward to simpler and more secure positions, "re- 
vival and reaction followed so fast on the heels 
of reform that had the Lutheran Church stood 
alone, neither the eloquence of its founder, nor the 
sagacity and steadfastness of the Saxon Electors, 
nor the vigor of Landgrave Philip could have saved 
it." 1 No truly observant reader of the conflicting 
spirits of this wonderful time will fail to note that 
the tendencies working for reform were not ex- 
hausted by Luther, for it did not follow that what 
he did not do could not be done by another. A 
more radical and complete reformation was 
wrought out by the leader of the Swiss, Zwingli. 
Their rebound from Rome was less traditional and 
more historical and rational than in the case of the 
Germans. While both leaned upon civil powers, 
these powers were not the same. In Luther's case 
the princes, in Zwingli's case the free people, backed 
up the movement entrusted to their several leaders. 
And when we reach the use that Calvin made of 
the opportunity offered to him in Geneva, whereby 
the "elders" — laymen — could freely express them- 
selves as influential agents in the organization of 



lDr. Fairbairn. Camb. Hist. 2. 345. 



The: Age: and its Problems. 



41 



the Church, it is not hard to point the path trod 
by the Reformed Church as it ran through Holland, 
England, Scotland, and America, widening as it 
went the thoroughfare in *which free thought and 
free religion, democracy, and constitutional govern- 
ment were to find their fullest, their most glorious, 
their most lasting illustrations. 



CHAPTER III. 



WANDERINGS. 

Calvin beat none too hasty a retreat from Paris. 
The scandal of the oration was great. The king 
wrote to the Parliament enjoining diligent pro- 
cesses against the "accursed Lutheran sect." 
Within a week there were fifty Lutherans in prison. 
But the fever of persecution quickly died down in 
the veins of the vacillating ruler. On his return to 
Paris, January 24, 1534, after effecting a secret 
treaty with the German Protestant princes, the hunt 
for heretics ceased. But only for a time. All 
hopes of lasting quiet were blown to the winds 
by a bit of fanatic folly on the part of over-zealous 
Protestants. One Faret, a servant of the king's 
apothecary, placarded a tract "on the horrible, 
great, intolerable abuses of the popish mass" 
throughout Paris, October 18, 1534, and the citizens 
rubbed their eyes in the morning to find their walls 
and fences disgraced with a most offensive placard. 
Even the door of the royal chamber at Fontaine- 
bleua was smutched with a copy. It was a deplorable 
act of folly, and aroused a furious persecution 
against innocent people who not only had no part 
42 



Wanderings. 



43 



in the matter, but were innocent of any purpose to 
offend the king. Before Christmas hundreds were 
languishing in prison, and many went to the stake. 
Wrath was whitehot. Both Church and State took 
deep offense, and mingled in mediaeval style peni- 
tence for real or imagined neglect of duty towards 
the true faith, with immediate and harsh penalties 
against the heretics. January 21, 1535, about eight 
in the forenoon an extraordinary procession issued 
from the Church of St. Germain l'Auxerrois, headed 
by priests bearing precious relics of various sorts. 
In due order came the king with head uncovered, 
and after him princes of the blood, nobles, and high 
officials. The oldest citizen of Paris had never 
seen such a cortege, nor so vast a multitude, filling 
pavement, doorway, window, and even roof. With 
measured tread the procession moved through the 
principal streets. Six times it paused, each time 
before a temporary altar. Beside the altar there 
hung a Lutheran, swinging in air from a movable 
iron frame, while below him burned a glowing fire. 
He was now lowered, now lifted, and his sufferings 
prolonged until, at the pausing of the royal party, 
he was finally dropped into the flames. Such was 
the penance and such the persecution. Thus king 
and people righted themselves before God! 

We have slightly anticipated events, overlapping 
some in the career of Calvin with the efforts of 
Paris to get even with heresy. From the day of his 
flight from the capital to the time of his arrival 



44 John Calvin: The Statesman. 

in Geneva Calvin wandered three years as a home- 
less evangelist, studying at the home of a friend, 
preaching, and writing in behalf of the Reforma- 
tion. He is now in Southern France, then in 
Switzerland, Italy, finally in Geneva. Dates and 
places are not always easy to determine. Calvin's 
life is not one of the sort, like Luther's, filled with 
incidents of great dramatic value, and one has to 
get into the deeper values of his career, the inner, 
the hidden, and the indirect, to properly estimate 
his place in history. Yet a few facts which have 
been preserved show him to have been a man equal 
to outward emergencies. May 4, 1534, he resigned 
his benefices at Noyon and Pont l'Eveque, and 
after a brief imprisonment at Noyon he was liber- 
ated. It was then he finally renounced Roman 
Catholicism. Fearing the forces of disorder which 
lurked in the uncertain development of Protestant- 
ism, he composed a tract against one of the peculiar 
articles of faith of the Anabaptists, that of sleep 
between death and the day of judgment. He did 
not make his appeal as in his first work to the 
classics, but to Holy Scripture, for evidence in 
overthrowing the unsound views of the Anabap- 
tists. Their unintelligent zeal he separated from 
their fanatic faith, and left the evangelical position 
in clear sunlight. Later on we find Calvin under 
the protection of Queen Margaret of Navarre, in 
her native city of Angouleme. Calvin lived with 
a wealthy friend, Louis du Tillet, canon of the 



Wanderings. 



45 



cathedral. His unstrained intimacy here and ever 
with men of letters and wealth and honorable po- 
sition was of pronounced benefit to him. In this 
place of seclusion he began his "Institutes." He 
also gave aid to his kinsman, Olivetan, in revising 
and translating the Bible into French. The work 
appeared at Xeufchatel in June, 1535, with a 
preface by Calvin. On going to Nerac, the tiny 
capital of the queen, he became acquainted with 
Le Fevre d'Etaples, the old Humanist and father 
of French Protestantism. Xear Poictiers, so the 
legend affirms, he celebrated for the first time the 
Lord's Supper with some friends in a cave, which 
for a long time bore the name of "Calvin's Cave." 

Near the end of the year 1534 he risked a visit 
to Paris. There a Spanish physician, named Ser- 
vetus, crossed his path, having but recently pub- 
lished a book, "On the Errors of the Trinity.'' He 
challenged Calvin to a public disputation. The 
challenge was accepted, but the debate never came 
off. Servetus failed at the last to put in an appear- 
ance. Twenty years later Calvin reminded him 
of his failure: ''You know that at that time I was 
ready to do everything for you, and did not even 
count my life too dear that I might convert you 
from your errors." What a blot would have been 
removed from Calvin's fame if he had done so. 
Better still, if he had never met the Spaniard. 

Did he meet Rabelais in the province of Sain- 
tonge? What an interesting bit of biography 



46 John Calvin: The Statesman. 



would be any portion of a conversation between 
the champion theologian and the first humorist of 
France. It is certain that Calvin denounced, in 
1533, "Pantagruel" as an "obscene book." Xor did 
Rabelais spare Calvin in the third book of "Panta- 
gruel/" and we know what he thought of the 
"demoniac of Geneva" at a still later day in Cal- 
vin's history. There could be only mutual distaste 
and disgust in any meeting between these two rep- 
resentatives of the serious and the jovial side of 
life. 

On the increase of persecution Calvin takes the 
road into uncertain exile. Under the name of 
Martianus Lucanius he reaches Basel, carrying 
with him the outlines of his immortal work. There 
he remained from January, 1535, to March, 1536. 
In this safe resting place he spent the time to high 
profit with scholars. Erasmus, while in residence 
in Basel from 15 14 to 1529, had issued his New 
Testament and his editions of the Latin Fathers, 
and there he died in July, 1536. The incident of 
his meeting Calvin, and the story told of the re- 
mark of the older scholar, that he saw "a great 
pestilence arising in the Church against the 
Church," is soundly doubted by S chaff, though it 
is told with embellishments by Merle d'Aubigne, 
as if he had been an interested looker-on during the 
interview. The man whose piety and learning had 
effectually changed Basel to the Protestant religion, 
Oecolampadius, had died three years prior to the 



Wanderings. 



47 



arrival of Calvin, but others of like character were 
on the ground, who gave to the Frenchman good 
welcome. Myeonius was chief pastor, and Simon 
Grynaeus was a scholarly Grecian, with whom Cal- 
vin learned to appreciate the best methods, as he 
himself tells us. of studying and explaining the 
Scriptures. Sebastian Minister was to him a mas- 
ter in Hebrew, "at whose feet he could sit without 
shame." Thomas Platter was a vagrant scholar 
and printer, from whose press Calvin's great book 
came all too slowly to satisfy the impatience of the 
strenuous author. All in all, Basel was a happy 
spot for recruiting energies and giving free ex- 
pression to opinion. There in a delightful environ- 
ment he prepared himself for heavier tasks soon to 
fall to his lot. 

The year of the "Placards" is correctly noted 
as a turning point in the history of French Prot- 
estantism. The king had now become flint, and 
his courtiers fury, to say nothing of the priesthood. 
The dreadful tidings of their wrath against the 
accused friends of Protestantism flew over Europe, 
and aroused the Protestant princes of Germany to 
remonstrate with Francis. He excused himself by 
saying, "He had been constrained to use this rigor 
against certain rebels who wished to trouble the 
State under the pretext of religion." This excuse 
evoked a remarkable reply. In August, 1535, a 
small volume fell from the press at Basel bearing 
no name of its author. It was dedicated in frank 



48 John Calvin: The Statesman 

and noble style to the French king. "This," said 
the author afterwards, "was what led me to pub- 
lish it : first, to relieve my brethren from an unjust 
accusation, and then as the same sufferings still 
hung over the heads of many poor faithful men in 
France, that foreign nations might be touched with 
commiseration for their woes, and might open to 
them a shelter." "If the act," says Michelet, "was 
bold, no less so was the style. The new French 
language was then an unknown tongue. Yet here, 
twenty years after Comines, thirty years before 
Montaigne, we have already the language of Rous- 
seau, his power if not his charm. But the most 
formidable attribute of the volume is its penetrat- 
ing clearness, its brilliance of steel rather than of 
silver; a blade which shines, but cuts. One sees 
that the light comes from within, from the depth 
of the conscience, from a spirit rigorously con- 
vinced, of which logic is the food. One feels that 
the author gives nothing to appearances, that he 
labors to find a solid argument upon which he can 
live, and if need be, die." 

In such terms is John Calvin introduced to us 
by one of his most brilliant countrymen, as the 
chief thinker of the age. The work was "Chris- 
tiana Religionis Institution The author was 
twenty-five years of age, and was seeking a hiding 
place for the further pursuit of his studies. But 
no man who wrote as he did could remain in hiding. 
The apologist of martyrs, the thinker of the new 



Wanderings. 



49 



faith, the legislator of the Reformed Church, he 
went to the front of all leaders, of all confidence, 
and of all wonderful service in the wide spreading 
array of the nascent powers of the young Church, 
just now, however, in danger of eclipse. 

Guizot thinks the work was written originally 
in French, when published at Basel in 1535 with- 
out the author's name. But Dr. Schaff*, after a pro- 
longed analysis of the contending claims of the two 
languages, Latin and French, avers, "The question 
of the priority of the Latin or French text is now 
settled in favor of the former," and quotes Calvin's 
statement in his preface to the French edition of 
1 541, that he first wrote the Institutes in Latin for 
readers of all nations, and then reproduced them 
in French for the sake of his countrymen. The 
dedicatory preface is dated August 23d, without 
the year; but at the close of the book the month 
of March, 1536, is given as the date of publication. 
The first French edition, 1541, supplements the 
date of the Preface correctly (August 23, 1535). 
The manuscript then was completed in 1535, but 
it took nearly a year to print the book. The error 
arises from confounding the date of the Preface, 
as given in the French editions (23 August, 1535), 
with the latter date of issue (March, 1536). 

Francis I, like Richelieu in the next century, 
courted friendship with Protestant princes in Ger- 
many, and even with the Turks, while in bitter 
conflict with the Emperor and other Catholic 
4 



50 John Calvin: The: Statesman. 



powers. Knowing the detestation with which his 
ill-treatment of his own Protestant subjects was 
regarded across the Rhine, he endeavored to excuse 
himself on the ground that he had sent none to 
death, except a few fanatics who were spreading 
abroad their contempt for rulers, and by their prac- 
tices tending to subvert good order in the kingdom. 
It was to silence such calumnies as these that Cal- 
vin published his apology for his suffering coun- 
trymen. 

The Dedication of the work is a masterpiece. 
Its style is pure and bold. A nervous energy char- 
acterizes its respectful appeal to the Csesar of the 
day. It fills eighteen pages, and ranks with a small 
handful of the greatest literary productions of the 
kind in history. 

The noble defense reaches its close with these 
words : "But I return to you, Sire. ... I fear 
I have gone too much into the detail, as this preface 
already approaches the size of a full apology, 
whereas I intended it not to contain our defense, 
but only to prepare your mind to attend to the 
pleading of our cause; for though you are now 
averse and alienated from us, and even inflamed 
against us, we despair not of regaining your favor, 
if you will only read with calmness and composure 
this our Confession, which we intend as our defense 
before your Majesty. But, on the contrary, if your 
ears are so preoccupied with the whispers of the 
malevolent, as to leave no opportunity for the ac- 



Wanderings. 



5i 



cused to speak for themselves, and if those outra- 
geous furies, with your connivance, continue to per- 
secute with imprisonments, scourges, tortures, con- 
fiscations, and flames, we shall indeed, like sheep 
destined to the slaughter, be reduced to the great- 
est extremities. Yet we shall in patience possess 
our souls and wait for the mighty hand of the Lord, 
which undoubtedly will in time appear, and show 
armed for the deliverance of the poor from their 
afflictions, and for the punishment of their de- 
spisers who now exult in such perfect security. 
. . . May the Lord, the King of kings, estab- 
lish your throne in righteousness, and your king- 
dom with equity !" 

Protestants and Catholics have joined in praise 
of this monumental production. Says Van Ooster- 
see, the eminent Dutch scholar: "No dry analysis 
is able to give a worthy idea of this book, now 
much more praised than read. Prefaced by the 
renowned letter of apology to Francis I, a vestibule 
worthy of its stately edifice, it points to the knowl- 
edge of God as the key to the sanctuary of eternal 
truth. While strictly systematic in its plan, it is 
thoroughly practical in spirit, the expression of the 
author's personal belief, and entirely founded on 
Holy Scripture, explained most strikingly by the 
exegete Calvin." Even Audin, the Romanist de- 
famer of Calvin, whose willingness to believe all ill 
of him is most startling in the face of overwhelm- 
ing proof to the contrary, has this to say of the 



52 John Calvin: The Statesman. 



Preface to the Institutes: "The dedication is one of 
the first monuments of the French language; it 
wants neither boldness nor eloquence." When it 
appeared, the literati declared that "it was a dis- 
course worthy of a great king, a portico worthy 
of a superb edifice, a composition which might be 
ranked by the side of De Thou's introduction to 
his Universal History, or with that of Casaubon 
to his Polybius." F. W. Kampschulte, the fairest 
of Roman Catholic biographers of Calvin, calls him 
"the Aristotle;" Martin, a liberal French historian, 
calls him with more fitness, "the Thomas Aquinas" 
of Protestantism. Guizot, the Protestant authority, 
says: "In spite of its imperfections, it is on the 
whole one of the noblest edifices ever erected by the 
mind of man, and one of the mightiest codes of 
moral law which has ever guided him." 1 

The Institutes were not written in popular style 
for the masses, and did not appeal to them with the 
same warmth and homeliness as did Luther's tract 
of "Christian Freedom." Written for scholars, it 
was handed by them to the plainer folk of the Re- 
formed Church. On the scent for heresy, the Sar- 
bonne discovered the character of the work, and 
ordered it to be burned ; but fortunately the print- 
ing-press is as constructive as fire is destructive, 
and the book went over Europe in short time. 

It is a mistake to suppose that Calvin produced 
a finished treatise upon theology in 1535. It is 
equally erroneous to believe that he changed his 

lSt. I<ouis and Calvin, 181. 



Wanderings. 



53 



views from that time until his death. At the same 
time we can well accept the idea that his mind grew 
in its range and balance of powers, and that his ad- 
ditions to the skeleton of 1535 were both in agree- 
ment with it and at the same time an amplification 
of its foundation statements. Calvin was wonder- 
fully precocious, and yet he must have grown in 
every way after the first venture, for the breadth 
of his vision and swing of his argument gained with 
the passing years. In the first edition he put forth 
a manual with six chapters, upon : ( 1 ) the Deca- 
logue; (2) the Apostles' Creed; (3) the Lord's 
Prayer; (4) Baptism and the Lord's Supper; (5) 
the other so-called Sacraments; (6) Christian Lib- 
erty, Church Government, and Discipline. The sec- 
ond edition has seventeen, the third twenty-one 
chapters. In the author's edition of 1559 it grew 
to five times its original size. Though the view 
point is the same, the elaboration is that of a master 
to whom the years brought their richest stores. 
According to S chaff, Calvin's doctrine is stated in 
more simple and less objectionable form. "He 
dwells on the comforting side of the doctrine, 
namely, the eternal election by the free grace of 
God in Christ, and leaves out the dark mystery of 
reprobation and pretention." 1 Yet as we shall see 
in the case of Servetus, Calvin had grown harder 
in his theory of the way in which such pests should 
be disposed of, and this appears in his Institutes! 
Calvin was not satisfied with his first efforts, 



Schaff. Reformation in Switzerland. 334. 



54 John Calvin: Ths Statesman. 

and did not rest until he had retouched his book 
many times. In the preface to the last edition, 
five years before his death, he says: "In the first 
edition of this work, not expecting that success 
which the I^ord, in His infinite goodness hath given 
me, I handled the subject for the most part in a 
superficial manner, as is usual in small treatises. 
But when I understood that it had obtained from 
almost all pious persons such a favorable accept- 
ance as I never could have presumed to wish, much 
less to hope, while I was conscious of receiving far 
more attention than I had deserved, I thought it 
would evince great ingratitude if I did not en- 
deavor at least, according to my humble ability, 
to make some suitable return for the attentions 
paid to me — attentions of themselves calculated to 
stimulate my industry. Nor did I attempt this only 
in the second edition, but in every succeeding one 
the work has been improved in some farther en- 
largements. But though I repented not the labor 
then devoted to it, yet I never satisfied myself till 
it was arranged in the order in which it is now 
published. ... I would rather it had been 
done sooner, but it is soon enough, if well enough. 
I shall think it has appeared at the proper time, 
when I shall find it to have been more beneficial 
than before to the Church of God. This is my only 
wish." 

First edition or last, it was sufficient to put Cal- 
vin, at twenty-five as well as at fifty years of age, 
in the front of the thinkers of the world. 



Wanderings. 



55 



But Calvin was not only a writer. He was a 
preacher, an evangelist, and soon after the publi- 
cation of the Institutes, or possibly before the 
printer had them ready for distribution, Calvin 
crossed Northern France to Italy, and there spent 
a few months at the brilliant court of the Duchess 
Renee. He had appealed to the King of France 
in a splendid Apology. He now sought the kins- 
woman of the monarch to secure from her, by per- 
sonal solicitation, aid for his distressed countrymen, 
and also to strengthen her in the faith. He was 
destined to become her monitor after a lofty and 
judicious manner. 

In a small upper salon of the palace of Ver- 
sailles hangs a portrait of Renee, Duchess of Fer- 
rara. Near by are Charles V, Christopher Colum- 
bus, Francis I, Rabelais, and Mary of England. A 
remarkable collection of worthies is this. The fea- 
tures of the Duchess are plain, their expression 
grave, the auburn hair stiffly curled, the high ruff 
and collar hinting the misshapen shoulder. The 
deep-set eyes tell of many trials. The mingled 
courage and kindness in the lines of the mouth re- 
veal the character of the protector and friend of the 
Protestants. Even in her infancy she showed the 
family spirit — un esprit tout de feu, one all of fire. 
Her grandfather was at Agincourt, and when the 
day was lost had tried in vain to rally the French 
against the fierce plunges of the English. Her 
father was Louis XII of France, her mother a 
woman of high character, her governess, Madame 



56 John Calvin: The Statesman. 

de Soubise, a member of a family afterward re- 
nowned for its sufferings in the cause of Protest- 
antism. Her marriage with the Duke of Ferrara 
gave her a home in what was called "a miniature 
Florence." Enthusiasm is too tame a word with 
which to describe the new spirit of inquiry which 
was abroad in Italy. Upon her arrival in Ferrara, 
1529, the Duchess chose for her private secretary 
Bernardo Tasso, father of Torquato Tasso, the 
poet. Artists, poets, philosophers, were always wel- 
come at the palace. In 1535 two men reached Fer- 
rara with letters of introduction from Queen Mar- 
garet of Navarre, the one John Calvin, the other 
his friend du Tiilet. Calvin came under an assumed 
name, "Charles Espeville." This was all but uni- 
versal when men had missions of private character, 
yet he seems not to have been disguised as to his 
true personality during his stay at the court, at 
least to the inner circle. 

Calvin became the spiritual adviser of the Duch- 
ess for the rest of his life. A free correspondence 
of a singularly noble kind was kept up for many 
years. His last letter to her was written just 
twenty-three days before his death. Her court 
became a place of refuge, and to it fled Clement 
Marot, the Protestant poet. Marot became the 
private secretary of the Duchess, and at her sug- 
gestion he began his well known work of trans- 
lating the Psalms into French. Their popularity 
was great in the highest as well as in the lowest 
circles of France. Francis I himself set the One 



Wanderings. 



57 



Hundred and Twenty-eighth Psalm to music, and 
yet a bit later it was made heresy to sing this col- 
lection when they had become a part of the simple 
liturgy of the Church at Geneva. 

In time the husband's displeasure fell upon the 
Duchess, and at his charge of heresy her Protestant 
attendants were removed, and their places taken by 
Italians, at which Rabelais, writing from Italy, 
said, "It does n't look well." Her husband's con- 
fessor said : "She remained obstinately fixed in her 
heretical opinions." After a period of humiliation 
in which the Inquisition was invited to examine 
her, she regained her freedom. Upon the death of 
her husband she left Ferrara, rather than change 
her religion. Calvin wrote to dissuade her from 
going to the court of France, but was unable to 
move her. She did not lack courage, and faced 
the evils and perils of her grandfather's court with 
fixed will. At the time of the arrest of the Prince 
of Conde by the Guises, her voice alone rang with 
indignation. She said to her son-in-law, a Guise, 
''Have a care, Monsieur; this is a wound that will 
bleed long !" 

Naturally the severity of the Duke d'Este 
towards the Protestants rendered it impossible for 
Calvin to long remain at the castle. But before 
he left Ferrara he greatly fortified the faith of those 
who were sick of Romanism. Without any idea 
of his future residence he left for the Xorth, headed 
it is thought for some spot in Germany, where 
he could retire to a quiet study and think and write 



58 John Calvin: The Statesman. 



for the Reformers' cause. Beyond this he seems 
not to have had a thought. His experiences as he 
wandered from place to place in Piedmont re- 
flected the friendly or the inimical spirit which his 
presence aroused. He remained in Piedmont sev- 
eral weeks in the neighborhood of Aosta, at the 
home of a family of rank, but at the spread of the 
alarm and orders to arrest Calvin "and all others 
of his party," he started over the mountains. It 
was with difficulty that he escaped through peril- 
ous Alpine passes, wherein he was, according to an 
ancient tradition, pursued by the Marshal d'Aosta 
to the very foot of the mountains with a drawn 
sword in his hand. The tradition may have slender 
foundation. But that Calvin's flight was regarded 
as a memorable event is certified by a Cross in 
Aosta. In 1541 a fountain topped by a cross was 
erected in the main street at the market-place of 
Aosta, and the following inscription may be read 
to-day by the traveler: 

Hanc 
Calvini Fuga 
ErExit Anno MDXU. 
Reugionis Constantia reparavit 
Anno MDCCXIJ. 

ClVIUM PlETAS 

Renovavit et adornavit 
Anno MDCCCXLI. 

"This Cross, erected in 1541, in memory of Calvin's 
flight, restored in 1741 by faithful believers, was renewed 
and ornamented in 184 1 by the piety of the Citizens." 



Wanderings. 



59 



Seldom thus do "the faithful" celebrate their 
deliverance from a foe so dangerous to the sta- 
bility of the ancient order. Calvin's presence, even 
at that young age, and without the great fame that 
came later on in his life, gave them concern. The 
Cross in the market-place, on which they chiseled 
their own gratitude over the expulsion of the plague 
of their homes, has also preserved the name and 
suggested the might of an exile who was surpassed 
in fame by only one other exile of Italy — the sad- 
browed Florentine, Dante. 

Calvin had been thrust out of Italy, never to 
return. He could get no welcome among his own 
race, the Latin, and in his quandary bent his steps 
towards Basel or Strassburg. But overcome by 
some impulse now unknown, he visited for the last 
time his boyhood home, and by his preaching influ- 
enced several of his kinsmen to accept the new re- 
ligion. Among others were his sister Marie and 
his only remaining brother, Antoine. In company 
with them he set out for Basel, but as hostilities 
had freshly broken out between Francis I and 
Charles V he avoided Lorraine, the seat of war, 
and journeyed on by way of Geneva. He intended 
to remain in the city only over night. But his 
destiny was linked to that of the city in a way he 
could not foresee. Neither the stranger alighting 
in front of the tavern for a night's lodging, nor the 
little city, glowing with pride over its lately won 
independence, could hope to understand each other 



6o John Calvin: The: Statesman. 



for some time. "The Pearl of the Alps" had for 
coat-of-arms a shield parted per pale, with a key on 
one side and half an eagle on the other. The 
people in jest declared it represented half a turkey 
and a key to the wine cellar. True or not, this was 
not altogether foreign to the general reputation of 
the city. 

A generation passed by, and the city discovered 
that the man had come to unlock a new future, in 
which keys to wine cellars were to have little part. 



CHAPTER IV. 



GENEVA BEFORE CALVIN. 

Geneva was the last of the Subalpine cities to 
revolt from Rome, yet it came to be .the symbol 
and center of the sternest and most impregnable 
opposition to the old faith. It ultimately absorbed, 
perpetuated, and glorified the life of the exile of 
Noyon. To no other city of Europe could Calvin 
have gone for such a favorable vantage ground 
of defense of his reform as this independent little 
metropolitan city offered to him. Though it re- 
fused all at once to do his bidding, later on it fully 
incorporated his spirit. There was nothing slug- 
gish about the life of Geneva, nothing wooden, 
nothing inanimate. As late as July, 1880, the sensi- 
tive Amiel could truly say in his Journal Intime: 
"Geneva is a cauldron always at the boiling point, 
a furnace of which the fires are never extinguished. 
Vulcan had more than one forge, and Geneva is 
certainly one of those world-anvils on which the 
greatest number of projects have been hammered 
out. When one thinks that the martyrs of all 
causes have been at work here, the mystery is ex- 
plained a little; but the truest explanation is that 
61 



62 John Calvin: The Statesman. 



Geneva — republican, Protestant, learned, and enter- 
prising Geneva — has for centuries depended upon 
herself for the solution of her own difficulties. 
Since the Reformation she has always been on the 
alert, marching with a lantern in her left hand and 
a sword in her right." 1 "Lantern and Sword" 
from the days of Calvin, and even from earlier 
days, but from him indubitably the lantern got a 
brighter radiance and the sword a keener edge, 
which shone and cut to the dismay of the enemies 
of the great little city and of its new faith. 

Before the thirteenth century ushered in upon 
Europe its new life, the counts and the bishops of 
Geneva had struggled for temporal control, with 
the victory going to the ecclesistical lords, but with 
the new age there came a new force to which ap- 
peal was made by the Genevan bishops for aid 
against their rivals. The House of Savoy proved 
too strong for the bishops whom it aided, and in 
the end dictated the appointment of the episcopal 
deputy for temporal administration, or vicedominus, 
a post which the Savoy rulers controlled until 1528. 
Meanwhile the burghers began to demand recog- 
nition, and by 1387 secured the right of gathering 
in a General Assembly to choose administrative offi- 
cers. These were four "syndics," selected annu- 
ally, and a treasurer chosen for a term of three 
years. Out of this there quickly developed the 
"Little Council," ultimately of twenty-five members, 



lAmiel's Journal. 2, 301. 



Geneva Before Calvin. 63 



the inner executive body of the interests of the 
burghers. A second Council, soon attaining the 
number of sixty, was established to discuss matters 
not easily debatable in the General Assembly. 

The tendency to aristocratic control is evident 
in the fact that the "Little Council," from 1459 on- 
ward, designated the membership of this larger 
Council. The division of authority between the 
bishop, the vidomne, and the citizens, and the con- 
sequent struggles for authority lasted until the 
third decade of the sixteenth century. But during 
three generations before Calvin's arrival aristo- 
cratic use of popular power was a well established 
fact in Geneva. The times when the little city was 
melting its bells for cannon and men went to 
church and worked on the fortifications with arms 
in their hands, in the struggles with the bishop and 
the duke, were highly favorable for the develop- 
ment of the finest mettle for self-government. Up 
to 1533 the conflict was almost wholly of a polit- 
ical type against the bishop and the duke as tem- 
poral rulers hostile to the chartered rights of Ge- 
neva. But with the increasing dependence of Ge- 
neva upon Bern, which had adopted the principles 
of the Reformation in 1528, and with the desire 
for reform at home aroused by the fiery preaching 
of Farel, who had entered the city armed with a 
letter from Bern, Geneva declared for reform, for 
resistance to papal abuses, and in favor of Bern 
and the "Word of God." Yet the spirit of the 



64 John Calvin : Ths Statesman. 

authorities in granting to Far el the right of free 
^preaching was not that of thorough-going reform-- 
ers, rather that of conservative politicians. The 
magistrates moved slowly. The party in for vigor- 
ous measures grew in importance. Formal Prot- 
estantism was not declared until as late as 1535. 
The two Councils which had assumed the lapsed 
civil functions of the pshop and the Chapter now 
began to widen their Authority. Under pressure 
from Farel they took in hand the introduction of 
reform into the outlying villages. This expansion 
stirred up Bern to military protest, and only the 
stubborn soul of the little commonwealth enabled 
her finally to achieve independence, both of enemies 
and quasi friends, and to assert herself an inde- 
pendent republic with nearly thirty dependent vil- 
lages. 

Genuine moral reform soon walked with the 
political change. Fearless preachers like Paul Viret 
and William Farel were unconsciously preparing 
-the way for the more commanding work of John 
Calvin. Farel is worth no small space in our story, 
for though he pales in the light that he introduced 
into Geneva, the vast personality of Calvin, he yet 
did a work and lived a life that bound him with 
hooks of steel to the greater man whom he in splen- 
did self-abnegation persuaded to stay in Geneva. 

William Farel was born at Gap, a small town 
in the hills of Dauphine, where the Waldensian 
faith had once widely spread. He grew up an 



Geneva Before Calvin. 



65 



ardent papist, and fully believed in the efficacy of 
works, pilgrimages, and relics. Yet his thirst for 
knowledge took him to Paris, where he studied the 
ancient languages, philosophy, and theology. His 
principal teacher was Jacques Le Fevre d' Etaples, 
the pioneer of the Reformation in France. Le 
Fevre said to him in 1512: "My son, God will re- 
new the world, and you will witness it.'" This was 
more than made good in the restless, and sometimes 
fierce, and nearly always successful evangelism of 
Farel. His radicalism compelled his flight to Basel 
in 1523. There, and in the neighborhood, he held 
public disputations, delivered lectures, and preached 
sermons of such power that Oecolampadius wrote 
to Luther that Farel was a match for the Sorbonne. 
To Erasmus he was a disturber of the peace, and 
in a moment of distrust the Council expelled him 
from the city. In Bern he found warmer welcome, 
and under the auspices of the Reformed Church of 
that commonwealth he labored as a sort of mission- 
ary bishop throughout that part of Switzerland, 
turning every stump into a pulpit and mightily 
arousing the people both for and against his doc- 
trine. He justified his appointment, for the little 
churches he planted in the southwest corner of the 
Canton of Bern were the first in the ranks of strictly 
French Protestantism. "With a daring often in- 
trusive, a zeal not always courteous, and a rough 
poetry in his utterances he traversed the whole 
country." He was violent, but only in language, 
5 



66 John Calvin: The Statesman. 



and amid hisses, shrieks, and flying missiles he 
would silence the crowd by his self-command, and 
then in his own eloquent style he would persuade 
his re^lers to listen to his message. He was the 
Whiteneld of his day in Switzerland. Perils only 
increased his audacity. He made the cathedrals 
that were stained with his blood ring with the 
echoes of his penetrating voice. At Neufchatel he 
so impressed his audience with the tsuth that the 
citizens shouted for reform, and cleansed the church 
of all papal apparatus, and in memory of the event 
inscribed upon a pillar of the church : "On October 
23, 1530, idolatry was overthrown and removed 
from this church by the citizens." This city be- 
came the first center of a presbyterial organization 
in French Switzerland. 

In 1 53 1 Far el wrote to Zwingli: "I learn that 
Geneva has thoughts of accepting Jesus Christ." 
In her journal of 1532 the literary nun, Jeanne de 
Jussie, made the following interesting note: "A 
shabby little preacher, one Master William, of 
Dauphiny, has just arrived in the city." Forthwith 
a sensation sprang up, for Farel made indifference 
to himself and his message impossible. The allied 
Cantons under the guidance of Bern backed the 
evangelist, and Geneva was induced to give the 
truth a free hearing. In a great debate, Peter 
Caroli, a doctor of the Sorbonne, was defeated, 
and the people began to yield to deeper convictions 
of the saving power of the simple Gospel. Farel 



Geneva Before Calvin. 



67 



urged the Council to make the establishment of the 
Reformation a thing of law. An edict of August 
27th abolished the papal system. On the shield of 
the city the inscription, ''After Darkness, j hope 
for Light," was changed to 'Tost Tenebras* Lux." 
The priests and nuns gradually took their depart- 
ure. The sprightly Jeanne de Jussie tells of the 
going to Annecy: "It was a piteous thing to see 
this holy company in such a plight, so overcome 
with fatigue and grief that several swooned by the 
way. It was rainy weather, and all were compelled 
to walk through muddy roads, except four poor in- 
valids who were in a carriage. There were six 
poor old women who had taken their vows more 
than sixteen years before. Two of these who were 
past sixty-six, and had never seen anything of the 
world, fainted away repeatedly. They could not 
bear the wind ; and when they saw the cattle in the 
fields, they took the cows for bears, and the long 
wooled sheep for ravening wolves." It took the 
nuns from five in the morning till near midnight 
to go a short league to Annecy. 

The conclusion of the nun who writes with pic- 
ture-making fidelity is that the upheaval was a just 
punishment of the faithless clergy, who, she said, 
"squandered dissolutely the ecclesiastical property, 
keeping women in adultery and lubricity, and awak- 
ening the anger of God, which brought divine judg- 
ment upon them." History has no disproof of the 
quickwitted nun's statement. 



68 John Calvin: Th£ Statesman. 

So the people of Geneva changed front. Now, 
without a bishop and with freedom from tyranny 
already won, they were their own masters. Yet 
they suffered from confusion. That they did not 
at once cut loose from the discipline of the past is 
evident from the various acts by which the Council 
strove to order the life of the city. For under the 
advice of Farel and from their sense of the need 
of preventing social and moral anarchy they 
adopted measures to promote good order, after a 
striking fashion, and this too with Calvin nowhere 
in sight. For they put the whole matter of regu- 
lating the moral order of Geneva to a popular vote. 
The crowd may not have known just what they 
were voting for, but the leaders of the city evi- 
dently did not care to take so important a step 
without the support of the populace. 

On Sunday, May 21, 1536, the whole body of 
citizens with uplifted hands took the following oath. 
After the first syndic, M. Claude Savoy, had pro- 
posed the resolutions, "without any dissenting voice, 
it was generally voted, and with hands raised in 
air resolved and promised and sworn before God, 
that we all by the aid of God desire to live in this 
holy evangelical law and Word of God, as it has 
been announced to us, desiring to abandon all 
masses, images, idols, and all which may pertain 
thereto, to live in union and obedience to justice. 
. . . Also voted to try to secure a competent man 
for the school, with sufficient salary to enable him 



Geneva Be^ors Calvin. 69 



to maintain and teach the poor free ; and that every 
one be bound to send his children to the school 
and have them learn; and all the pupils and teach- 
ers to be bound to go into residence at the great 
school where the Rector and his Bachelors shall 



The vow to provide free education and to re- 
quire all to get schooling is as typical of the coming 
Puritan State as the vow to obey God. The church 
and the school got together early in the history of 
Puritanism. 

By 1536, entirely aside from any dictation of 
an intruder, as the GalifTes have been wont to call 
Calvin, the Councils had assumed the entire control 
of morals and religion, now doing with a free hand 
what they had formerly shared with the ecclesi- 
astical rulers. February 28, 1536, the Two Hun- 
dred issues a formal proclamation prohibiting blas- 
phemy ; profane oaths ; card playing ; protection of 
adulterers, thieves, and vagabonds ; selling bread or 
wine save at reasonable established prices ; and un- 
authorized holding of taverns. There was to be 
no holiday save Sunday; no coming of brides to 
weddings with head uncovered ; no baptizing or 
marrying by private persons ; no hearing mass 
within or without the city. New England did not 
invent "blue laws ;" nor did Old England ; nor did 
John Calvin. "They were rather the sequelae of 
the Middle Ages. They are the attempts of the 
new Protestant State to take over the personal su- 



be.' 




70 John Calvin: The; Statesman. 

pervision exercised by the mediaeval state and 
guild." 

However earnest the civil power was to organ- 
ize Genevan society after the expression of its new 
convictions, it must not be thought that the actions 
above narrated righted all matters at once. The 
citizenship of the city did indeed consider itself 
sufficient for control in place of the deposed bishop, 
but it remained for Calvin in his farewell address 
to say of the state at his coming: "In this church 
there was well nigh nothing. There was preaching, 
and that is all. . . . All was in confusion." 

The usual exaggeration of the condition of 
unchecked anarchy which is said to have charac- 
terized Geneva before the arrival of Calvin will 
need to be taken with serious modification. The 
Catholics tell it, for it sullies the Reformation; the 
hero-worshiper of Calvin tells it, for he is thus 
enabled to glorify the Reformer who came in the 
nick of time to prevent a collapse of the cause in 
jeopardy of its own freedom. One must imagine a 
city in which there was not a little discord due to 
the shock of change, the flocking in of political 
refugees, the unsettled results of factional conten- 
tions both civil and religious, the inability of leaders 
like the impulsive Farel to allay strife and sup- 
plant it with settled peace, and it is not diffi- 
cult to picture a situation calling loudly for the 
coming and supremacy of a master mind and will. 
And yet a city not peculiarly worse than other 



Gsnsva Before: Calvin. 71 



cities, not more lawless, nor more helpless to ad- 
just its life in harmony with the new life and light 
and impulse which were beginning to illuminate 
and thrill the peoples of Western Europe. 

Before Calvin came there was intolerance. The 
case of John Balard is of interest and not without 
pathetic character. In the Register of the City 
Council we have the following entry for July 24, 
1536: "John Balard was interrogated wherefore 
he refused to hear the Word of God? He replied 
that he believed in God, who taught him by His 
Spirit. He could not believe our preachers. He 
said that we could not compel him to go to the 
sermon against his conscience. . . . We admon- 
ished him that he should within three days obey 
the proclamation or show just cause why he should 
not. He replied: 'I desire to live according to 
God's Gospel, but I do not wish to follow it accord- 
ing to the interpretation of any private persons, but 
according to the interpretation of the Holy Spirit 
through the Holy Church universal in which I be- 
lieve. Balard.' " This his creed, written in his own 
hand on a scrap of paper is sewn with a faded red 
thread to the records of that day. Though Balard 
held high offices, he was compelled to yield to the 
resistless current which was sweeping Geneva 
away from its ancient moorings. He was required 
to give "affirmative or negative answer" as to the 
mass, and wrote : "The mass is bad." Balard was 
a traditionalist it may be imagined, but he was a 



72 



John Calvin: Ths Statesman. 



sane official of repute, who was compelled to sub- 
mit his religious scruples to his political necessi- 
ties. He was up before the Council on several 
occasions, significant in that they were not during 
the time of Calvin's presence in the city, for the 
first inquisition was dated July, 1536, before Cal- 
vin's coming, and the last in 1539, at a time when 
Calvin was in forced exile in Strassburg. Europe 
did not wait to herald the appearance of Calvin 
with the show of intolerance, and give its hateful 
and bitter spirit the various exhibitions which array 
themselves upon the pages of all histories of those 
times, but, if Catholic, flung itself with tremendous 
energy into the business of suppressing heresy at 
all hazards, and if Protestant, did not hesitate to 
give the stranger within its gates of orthodoxy 
a most chilling welcome. 

It must not be concluded that though the peo- 
ple shook off the yoke of lord and bishop, 
Geneva at this early date, or ever during Calvin's 
rule, solved the question of representative govern- 
ment. Slowly she made her way into the light of 
the modern world. In trie vital changes from the 
old to the new faith the "Commune" had acted in 
their sovereign capacity, but in the struggle for 
independence and order there had been a growing 
tendency to concentrate power in the hands of a 
few men, "conservative, responsible, and experi- 
enced." This was adopted by Calvin after seven 
years' testing, and by John Winthrop in Massa- 



Geneva Before Calvin. 



73 



chusetts Bay, a hundred years later. It was effi- 
cient, but not without its perils to liberty. It is 
true that the mettlesome spirit of the people saved 
Geneva from falling into the grasp of despots, and 
the influence of the preachers was not inactive in 
preventing the magistrates from absorbing all au- 
thority, and it was not until after both Calvin and 
Beza, his great successor, were gone that the aris- 
tocrats rose superior to the democrats, and devel- 
oped a dangerous social and political supremacy. 
Long before the French Revolution, there were 
as many as three distinct upheavals in Geneva, in 
1707, 1735-38, and 1782, in which the aristocracy 
suffered assault. 

What have we then in this eventful day? 
Before Calvin Geneva had not adopted democracy ; 
nor freedom of conscience ; nor liberty of worship ; 
nor personal liberty; she had legislated upon 
matters of amusement, commerce, sermons, holi- 
days, and even styles in hair-dressing. The Church 
had less right of initiative in the first days of the 
attempts at reform under Farel than under Calvin, 
if indeed it can be said to have had any at all. "It 
had no rights of either property, discipline, revis- 
ion of membership, or choice of pastors." 1 

This much in a general way we can affirm ; 
that Geneva was ready for Calvin. She had a 
peculiar temper which for lack of a better word 



l See the very able article of A. D, Foster in Amer. Hist, Rev. 
Jan. *903. 



74 John Calvin: The Statesman. 

may be called "mentality," and she could appreciate 
the presence of a master mind. Many Protestant 
writers have overshot the mark in cataloguing 
her vices before the coming of Calvin, for no 
people surrendered to immorality could have devel- 
oped such brilliant wit and maintained such noble 
defense against a cordon of enemies. The Ge- 
nevans were a complex people. They loved pleas- 
ures, they were the inheritors of the feudal noisi- 
ness and much given to turbulence. Processions, 
games and dancing were to their taste. Shrewd 
at a bargain they were not always scrupulous; 
self-assertive, they earned their independence. 
Thrifty, they gathered fortunes. Intelligent, they 
welcomed scholars. Public-spirited, loving liberty, 
what they swore to support they died for. Near 
France, they were something else than French; 
neighbors to Italy, they were not Italian ; nor were 
they German because they got glimpses of the 
Rhine. Full of contradictions, they were full of 
charm. As one of their own well known citizens, 
Bonivard, the "Prisoner of Chillon," said in his 
Chronicles: "One might kill them rather than make 
them consent to that from which they had once 
dissented. . . . Otherwise they were for the most 
part thoughtless and devoted to their pleasures; 
but the war, necessarily, the reformation of relig- 
ion, voluntarily, withdrew them therefrom." So 
it seems that what Geneva did in schooling her- 
self to lead the hosts of Puritanism in the middle 



Geneva Before Calvin. 75 



of the sixteenth century she did of her own accord, 
Bonivard being witness. 

Into this volatile, sturdy, pleasure-loving, con- 
tentious, masterful, loyal community, the right man 
came at the right time to put the impress of his 
imperial genius upon its plastic life, and to make 
the impression so sure that some centuries passed 
by before the outlines of the image were seriously 
dulled, and so vital that its capacity for reproduc- 
tion in other and distant lands has become the 
marvel of historians. 



CHAPTER V. 



CALVIN'S FIRST SOJOURN IN GENEVA. 

Two months after the public sanction to the 
Reformation in Geneva (May 21st), Calvin stepped 
from a carriage of slender proportions in front of 
a tavern in the city. The date was in the latter 
part of July, not, as given by some, in August. 
His desire was to make a short stay in the city, 
and to proceed on his journey in the morning. 
Clad in simple habit he appeared the scholar that 
he was, a thin, abstemious, bookish man. His 
countenance was pale, and according to one writer, 
K. Haag, his beard was cut a la Frangois, his eye a 
brilliant black, his bearing one of purpose. 

His arrival was the turning point of his life; 
its effect upon Geneva was incalculable. Of it 
Montesquieu says : "The Genevese ought to observe 
the day of his arrival in their city as a festival." 
The zeal of his friend du Tillet made known to 
Farel that Calvin was in the city, and this unselfish 
man immediately set about to hold him for the 
good of Geneva. Farel had given himself to the 
work of renovating the city, but had reached his 
limit of influence after the primary impulse had 

76 



First Sojourn in Geneva. 



77 



been expended, and the author of the Institutes was 
to the fervent soul an answer of God to his prayer. 
Under Calvin there might be secured such a mo- 
mentum as none other could give. Farel brought 
all his energy to bear upon the newcomer to gain 
his consent to remain. To Calvin's plea that he 
wished to study in Germany, and to his word "I 
can not bind myself to one Church. I would be 
useful to all," Farel opposed his utmost persua- 
sions. Calvin pleaded his youth, his natural timidity, 
and his inexperience in affairs of public action. 
Farel thundered and threatened, and overbore Cal- 
vin's protests. Long time after Calvin wrote: "I 
was kept in Geneva, not properly by an express 
exhortation or request, but rather by the terrible 
threatenings of William Farel, which were as if 
God had seized me by His awful hand from 
Heaven. So I was compelled to give up the plan 
of my journey, but yet without pledging myself 
to undertake any definite office, for I was con- 
scious of my timidity and weakness." 

Merle d'Aubigne's dramatic account of the in- 
terview must be taken with reserve, as some of 
the facts he narrates have no origin save in his 
imagination. 

Calvin did not immediately rush to prominence. 
Farel was for awhile, at least, in the popular view, 
the chief minister of the Protestant movement in 
Geneva. And yet Farel was justified in his expec- 
tation that Calvin would prove a master workman 



78 John Calvin: Th£ Statesman. 

in the organization of the Genevan Church, for in 
the speedy preparation of the Articles dealing with 
Church government, of the Catechism, and of the 
Confession of Faith, of which last Farel was the 
main composer, though expressing the mind of 
Calvin, the masterful presence of the newcomer 
was evident. First, his colleagues, then the leaders 
of government, finally the mass of the people felt 
his strong hand in the life of Geneva. 

It was not until February 13, 1537, and some 
time after an earnest appeal on the part of Farel 
to the Little Council for the grant of an adequate 
sum for Calvin's support, that an amount was or- 
dered, six gold crowns, and yet so unknown was 
Calvin to the clerk that in the entry of the request 
for the grant he referred to Calvin as "Iste 
Gallus" — "That Frenchman." The solitary exile, 
with few intimate friends, moneyless, and sure of 
only a night's lodging, was always a poor man, 
but by sheer force of will and unwonted mental 
activity and a profound conviction of the impera- 
tive need of reform, he did finally succeed in 
becoming the leader of every circle in which he 
was thrown. We say advisedly, not at first, for 
too many conflicting currents of opinion and prac- 
tice made such mastery impossible at one stroke. 
Calvin failed in his first attempt to bed the princi- 
ples of the Reformation in the hearts and con- 
sciences of the Genevese. 

Before the coming of Calvin it had been voted 



First Sojourn in Gsnsva. 79 



by the Council, May 24, 1536, to draft Articles to 
secure the "unity of the State." On November 
10th, following, prompt approval was given to a 
plan submitted by Farel. 1 January 16, 1537, the 
records of the Little Council show that Articles 
were submitted "given by MeG. Farel and other 
preachers." There can be little doubt that in 
these not only the mind but the very language of 
Calvin are embodied, for thoughts and words of 
the Institutes are unmistakable. 

Calvin's main purpose was to secure a relig- 
ious community. For fear that the too frequent 
celebration of the Lord's Supper would cheapen 
that holy rite, he recommended its observance once 
a month. To protect this sacred ordinance against 
all mistreatment he urged that all unworthy cele- 
brants should be excluded. Here we reach the 
core of his efforts to gain his ends — by their pro- 
vision to enforce church discipline, the Articles get 
their significance. The proposition to establish a 
censorship of morals is quite evident from the 
following, laid by the ministers before the Council : 

"Our Lord established communication as a means of 
correction and discipline, by which those who led a dis- 
orderly life unworthy of a Christian, and who despised 
to mend their ways and to return to the strait way after 
they had been admonished, should be expelled from the 
body of the Church and cut off as rotten members until 
they come to themselves and acknowledge their fault. 

1 Professor W. Walker is of the opinion that the plan of Farel 
was simply of anti-Roman character. John Calvin, p. 185. 



8o John Calvin: The: Statesman. 



. . . We have an example given by St. Paul (i Tim. i 
and I Cor. v), in a solemn warning that we should not 
keep company with one who is called a Christian, but who 
is, none the less, a fornicator, covetous, an idolator, a 
railer, a drunkard, or an extortioner. So if there be in 
us any fear of God, this ordinance should be enforced in 
our Church. 

"To accomplish this we have determined to petition 
you (i. e., the town council) to establish and choose, ac- 
cording to your good pleasure certain persons (namely, 
the elders) of upright life and good repute among all the 
faithful, likewise constant and not easy to corrupt, who 
shall be assigned and distributed in all parts of the town 
and have an eye on the life and conduct of every individ- 
ual. If one of these see any obvious vice which is to be 
reprehended, he shall bring this to the attention of some 
one of the ministers, who shall admonish whoever it may 
be who is at fault, and exhort him in a brotherly way to 
correct his ways. If it is apparent that such remonstrance 
do no good, he shall be warned that his obstinacy will be 
reported to the Church. Then if he repents, there is in 
that alone excellent fruit of this form of discipline. If he 
will not listen to warnings, it shall be time for the minister, 
being informed by those who have the matter in charge, 
to declare publicly in the congregation the efforts which 
have been made to bring the sinner to amend, and how all 
has been in vain. 

"Should it appear that he proposes to persevere in his 
hardness of heart, it shall be time to excommunicate him; 
that is to say, that the offender shall be regarded as cast 
out from the companionship of Christians, and left in the 
power of the devil for his temporal confusion, until he 
shall give proof of penitence and amendment. In sign of 
his casting out he shall be excluded from the communion, 
and the faithful shall be forbidden to hold familiar con- 
verse with him. Nevertheless he shall not omit to attend 



First Sojourn in Ge}n£va. 8i 



the sermons in order to receive instruction, so that it may- 
be seen whether it shall please the Lord to turn his heart 
to the right way. 

"The offenses to be corrected in this manner are those 
named by St. Paul above, and others like them. When 
others than the said deputies — for example, neighbors or 
relatives — shall first have knowledge of such offenses, they 
may make the necessary remonstrances themselves. If 
they accomplish nothing, then they shall notify the deputies 
to do their duty. 

"This, then, is the manner in which it would seem 
expedient to us to introduce excommunication into our 
Church and maintain it in its full force; for beyond this 
form of correction the Church does not go. But should 
there be insolent persons, abandoned to all perversity, who 
only laugh when they are excommunicated, and do not 
mind living and dying in that condition of rejection, it 
shall be your affair to determine whether you should long 
suffer such contempt and mocking of God to pass unpun- 
ished. . . . 

"If those who agree with us in faith should be pun- 
ished by excommunication for their offenses, how much 
more should the Church refuse to tolerate those who op- 
pose us in religion? The remedy that we have thought of 
is to petition you to require all the inhabitants of your 
city to make a confession and give account of their faith, 
so that you may know who agree with the gospel, and 
who, on the contrary, would prefer the kingdom of the 
pope to the kingdom of Jesus Christ." 

To the pleasure-loving Genevese this was a 
most drastic programme. The Protestantism which 
was confined to independence of the control of 
Rome, and even the establishment of a new doc- 
trinal basis was not so obnoxious to them, but 
6 



82 John Calvin: Tut Statesman. 

when the French theologian, with his exalted and 
over-scrupulous morality proposed to become a 
censor of morals and a master of discipline, they 
resented his intrusion. Not all, indeed, but for the 
time the "liberals" held the upper hand. Calvin 
with his Confession, his Catechism, and his Dis- 
cipline, was too sudden an incursion into the field 
of their old life for any wise man to hope for the 
immediate triumph of the new reform. Doubtless 
there was enough vice to warrant reasonable vigor 
in attempts to suppress it, and no one can fail to 
commend the purity of the motive that lay back 
of Calvin's plan, yet no one will deny that the 
methods used were unwise. When in 1537 the 
four newly elected syndics upheld the ministers in 
compelling the Council and all the citizens to swear 
to the Confession, the opposition began to stir its 
strength. Many people refused outright, as might 
have been expected, to support the new regime. 

The young men chafed, the liberal patriots 
struggled in the net, the French refugees upheld 
Calvin. These last played a rather conspicuous 
part in the present contention. They have been 
the subjects of malignant opprobrium on the part 
of their enemies, who have counted them as inter- 
lopers, and held worthy of eulogism by those whose 
sympathies have been on the side of exiles in search 
of homes and good order, of relief from persecu- 
tion, and the reformation of society. The facts 
seem to be; these immigrants had been the vie- 



First Sojourn in Geneva. 83 



tims, and those following them from France were 
also in later years, of merciless treatment. Some 
of them had been eminent enough to attract atten- 
tion to their "heresy." They bore with them vis- 
ible evidences of their ability to take the conse- 
quences of their adherence to the new faith. They 
had not been silenced on their native soil by fire, 
sword, and noose, and were wont to express them- 
selves as to their doctrinal position wherever their 
exile bore them. Their arrivals in Geneva had 
not been unnoticed before the coming of Calvin, 
and they were numerous enough in 1536 to excite 
the jealousy of the native patriots. A crisis was 
soon reached, not on the merits of the new disci- 
pline, but on a point of ceremony. 

It was a blunder to decree that all who refused 
to sign the Confession should take their departure 
from the city ; to employ force of civil law to purify 
the church by punishing vices and follies was not a 
stroke of genius in statesmanship, at least from 
the modern point of view. Calvin was still a young 
man, and had no small sense of the worth of his 
own views ; he had been urged against his will 
to stay in Geneva to lead in the reform, and, true 
to his nature, what he did at all he did with all 
his might. He led on too fast, for the time. His 
aim was the independent self-government of the 
Church. He had not originated the regulation of 
private conduct ; that was a peculiarity of Geneva 
at his coming. But he made a serious attempt to 



84 John Calvin: The Statesman. 

recover for the Church, itself a creature of the 
State and regulated by the State, the right of in- 
dependent discipline. Within the limits of its own 
power, the Church was not to look to the State 
for aid in the enforcement of its discipline, and 
the State was not to be called upon until such 
time as the Church was proved to be unable to 
control its own recalcitrant members. 

The reformers contended for the right of ex- 
communication in cases of stubborn disobedience; 
the magistrates were not unwilling to assist in the 
maintenance of discipline, but did not commit them- 
selves at once to the clause of excommunication. 
The whole people were not to be brought into line 
by such restrictions as Calvin desired to impose. 
Many of the influential citizens refused to take the 
oath of the Confession. The Council found it im- 
possible to enforce the stiff moral regimen. In 
the general election of February, 1538, the anti- 
clerical party managed to elect four syndics and a 
majority of the Council, among whom were avowed 
enemies of Calvin. 

The political overturn was complete, and the 
jeers of the populace at Farel and Calvin reflected 
the new attitude of the authorities toward the re- 
formers. A harsh order with regard to some of 
the friends of Calvin brought down upon the Coun- 
cil of Two Hundred severe denunciation on the 
part of Calvin and his yoke-fellow, and there was 
passed an order by the Council forbidding them 



First Sojourn in Geneva. 85 



"to mix in politics, but to preach the Gospel as God 
has commanded." The same session of the Two 
Hundred voted "to live under the Word of God 
according to the ordinances of the lords of Bern." 
To a man of Calvin's temper this was too insulting 
to be borne, for it cut away completely all his plan 
for self-initiative on the part of the Church, and 
left in the hands of the civil power the determina- 
tion of even the ritual of the Church. 

To return now to the point of the ceremony 
involved. The declination of the new rulers to 
adopt a thoroughgoing policy of reform aroused the 
reformers to an iron-willed devotion to their prin- 
ciples. Yield? Not they. Not an inch. They 
thundered against vices and charged the Council 
with want of energy in their neglect to use proper 
means for improving the moral condition of Ge- 
neva. The return stroke was not long in falling. 
March 12th Couralt, who was even more vehement 
than Farel, was ordered to cease preaching. But, 
undismayed, he took the pulpit on April 7th, and 
lashed the people and magistrates of Geneva with- 
out distinction. He compared the State of Geneva 
to the kingdom of frogs, and the Genevese to rats. 
The limit of forbearance was at hand, and the 
fiery preacher was imprisoned, then deported to 
Thonon, on the lake shore, where his death before 
the close of the year removed one of the stirrers 
of strife from the city. To Calvin and Farel, how- 
ever, this harshness was merely reason for fresh 



86 John Calvin: Ths Statesman. 

denunciation of the Council. Calvin called it the 
"Devil's Council," and had a tumult in the city 
on short notice. Libels flew around the ministers. 
In the cool of the evening they heard the raucous 
voices of street idlers crying out: "To the Rhone 
with the traitors !" 

The climax was reached Easter Sunday, April 
2 ist, when Calvin preached from the pulpit of St. 
Peter's, and Farel from that of St. Gervais. They 
had been ordered by the authorities to celebrate the 
Easter Communion after the Bernese fashion, but 
had refused to do so, owing to the existing state 
of insubordination, and, as they alleged, to the 
lamentable debauchery of some members of the 
church who persisted in coming to the table of the 
Lord. The preachers determined that God should 
not be mocked with desecration, and they refused 
to distribute the elements. This made the breach 
complete. 

To comprehend the gravity of the situation, one 
must know the claims of Bern to right of offering 
its services to its younger ally. Geneva had not 
been unwilling to accept the advice of Bern, and 
indeed had generally adopted the suggestions of 
the Bernese Republic. But when the pastors of 
Bern ventured to suggest the retention of the font, 
and of certain fetes, Christmas, New Year's, An- 
nunciation, and Ascension Day, and the use of un- 
leavened bread in the Lord's Supper, there was 
friction. All these Calvin had suppressed. While 



First Sojourn in Ge)ne;va. 87 

he did not lay stress upon ceremonies, he cer- 
tainly did not share the fanatic scorn of the igno- 
rant touching some of the Catholic rites. His 
theology may have been narrow in some respects, 
but his attitude towards the English Prayer-Book 
had in it a reflection of his general compass of 
mind: "The Book of Common Prayer had in it 
tolerabiles ineptias; some follies, which, however, 
might be easily allowed to pass." In his catechism 
which he published in 1538, at Basel, he said: "We 
should rather endeavor (to secure) a unity of doc- 
trine and spirit among Christians than pettedly in- 
sist on establishing certain ceremonies. Little will 
be said of forms on the Day of Judgment." 

While it may be possible to discover in this 
statement of 1538 an indirect attempt to correct the 
efforts of the Bernese to clap their rites upon the 
Genevese in 1537, at any rate when Calvin was 
summoned by the Council to conform in 1537 to 
the Bernese usages, he stoutly refused to com- 
promise the independence of the Genevan Church 
by adopting them. With this spirit he and his com- 
panion had delivered their minds on Easter Day 
and had withheld the elements, for fear of profan- 
ing "so holy a mystery" under the circumstanced 
of popular tumult. That there was reason in their 
refusal may be granted when we hear of the pres- 
ence of many hearers with drawn swords, and 
whose noisy objections drowned the voices of the 
preachers. The services closed and friends gath- 



88 John Calvin: The Statesman. 



ered about to give safe conduct home to the min- 
isters. An ordinary man would have felt that he 
had sufficiently waved his colors in the face of the 
enemy, but John Calvin was not an ordinary man. 
Despite the fact that the Little Council was sum- 
moned immediately, and called the Two Hundred 
together for the day following, and the General 
Assembly for the day thereafter, Calvin delivered 
another sermon at night on Easter Day in the 
Church of St. Francis at Rive in the lower part 
of the city. Here he was again threatened with 
violence. 

By a large vote of the General Assembly April 
23d, Calvin and Farel were ordered to leave Geneva 
within three days. No sign of dismay was evident 
in the appearance and words of the two men, 
Farel, who said to the messenger, "Well and good ; 
it is from God;" and Calvin, who remarked: "It 
is better to serve God than man. If we had sought 
to please men, we should have been badly rewarded, 
but we serve a higher Master, who will not with- 
hold from us our reward." The dry pages of the 
Register of the Council on which were entered the 
words the messenger brought back, tell their own 
story of the uncrushed spirit of Calvin, for he left 
Geneva immediately for Bern and laid the case 
before the authorities of that city. Bern was de- 
sirous of securing conformity touching ceremonies, 
but had good cause to fear for the safety of the 
Protestant reform in Geneva, and appealed to 



First Sojourn in Geneva. 89 



Geneva for modification of its legislation. Geneva 
refused to listen. Meanwhile Calvin and Farel 
pushed on to Zurich and sought the interference 
of the Synod which was in session April 28th. Be- 
fore this body they declared that in their attitude 
there was no objection to the Bernese rites if the 
liberties of the individual church were not affected, 
but they reaffirmed their position regarding a pro- 
gramme for church reform. They got some sym- 
pathy from the Synod, though they were advised 
to use more tactful ways of gaining the end de- 
sired in the midst of a people unused to rigorous 
discipline. The Synod also sent them to Bern 
with recommendation for support in their pur- 
pose to gain admission to Geneva, and to this 
Bern lent a willing hand, but when the embassy 
dispatched by Bern with Calvin and Farel ap- 
proached Geneva they found a hostile order refus- 
ing them entrance, and were compelled to turn 
back. Geneva confirmed the sentence of banish- 
ment, May 28th, and fell to rejoicing over the vic- 
tory by which baptismal fonts and unleavened bread 
were to be used by unregenerate communicants. 
It remained to be seen how far they could make 
safe pilgrimage towards the goal unguided by the 
man they had pushed out. For the present, they 
were glad to go on without interference, dicta- 
tion, or inspiration from John Calvin. 

For his part he left Geneva, having failed, but 
undisgraced. His natural impetuosity did not 



90 John Calvin : The: Statesman. 



easily adjust itself to the party strifes of the con- 
tentious community all too slowly going, as he 
thought, towards a self-governing, orderly, Chris- 
tian city. The exiles bent their faces to Basel, 
where they had good welcome. Shortly Farel went 
to Neufchatel, and two months later Calvin left 
for Strassburg. 



CHAPTER VI. 



YEARS OF EXILE. 

Th£ city in which Calvin found refuge was a 
free imperial city of Germany, a sort of connecting 
link between Germany, France and Switzerland, 
and hospitable for the present to all Protestants, so 
that those from France styled it the New Jeru- 
salem. Having accepted the Reformation in 1523 
in a spirit of evangelical friendship for the two 
types of Protestantism, the Lutheran and the 
Zwinglian, it became a clearing house for theolog- 
ical harmony, and influenced by Martin Bucer, a 
leader in irenic thought. Distinguished refugees 
from France turned their steps thither with special 
hopes of undisturbed enjoyment of free speech, free 
worship, and freedom for organizing their mem- 
berships into self-governing communities. The 
later intolerance which attached to Strassburg did 
not at this time hinder Calvin from finding sym- 
pathetic welcome. 

He reached Strassburg the first days of Sep- 
tember, 1538, and preached his first sermon on the 
8th of the same month. The leaders of the Church 
gave him their confidence and open arms, and he 
91 



92 John Calvin: Th£ Statesman. 

received the appointment by the Council of pro- 
fessor of theology, with a small salary accompany- 
ing. That it was insufficient we are not in doubt, 
and only the proferred kindness of an intimate 
friend, du Tillet, revealed to the deeply-wounded 
and chagrined scholar that he need not depend upon 
official support, if only he would become content 
to withhold himself from public activity. This 
Calvin could not do, and he declined the aid offered 
by his old friend, who, by the way, was now turn- 
ing his face back to Romanism. Calvin's financial 
distress was oftentimes very real. To make ends 
meet he swelled the fifty-two florins of annual sal- 
ary which he got from the authorities, by taking 
young French students to board. To his beloved 
Farel he wrote : "I am so needy, that I have not a 
cent in my pocket. You will be unwilling to credit 
how expensive it is to keep house." Farel man- 
aged to send him some money for lifting the tem- 
porary burden. But the proud-spirited man made 
it a condition that he should accept no more than 
he could hope to repay within a reasonable time. 
He worked on, not infrequently without the plain- 
est necessities of life, but noted for a remarkable 
generosity which gave to others all above his bare 
living. 

Yet he had an increasing number of friends, 
was happy in his work, and steadily ripened for 
the severe struggles awaiting him in the future. 
It was a fortunate respite for him, and he grew in 



Years otf Exils. 



93 



self-restraint, and power of control of the elements 
of conflict. He broadened his views of the work 
of the Reformation, coming as he did in contact 
with the leaders of the Lutheran Church. While 
he deplored their lack of discipline, and the 
slavish dependence of the clergy upon the princes, 
he found welcome at several of their Colloquies 
summoned for the settlement of disputed questions. 
As delegate he attended the diets or conferences 
of Frankfort, Hagenau, Worms, and Ratisbon, to 
aid in finding some common ground of unity. The 
task was a delicate and difficult one, nor were the 
German, Swiss, and French Churches harmonized, 
nor the Lutherans and Zwinglians reconciled on 
the question of the Eucharist. At that time no 
man was equal to the solution of the problem. In 
these meetings Calvin became more or less inti- 
mate with Melanchthon and other leaders, and their 
valuation of him appears in the words with which 
they characterized him, — "The Theologian." He 
never met Luther. It troubled him that Luther 
refused to moderate his terms in the argument with 
Zwingli on the subject of the Lord's Supper, on 
which the great German never entirely broke with 
the Roman Church, while the Swiss advanced to 
the most modern views. Calvin thought more of 
Luther personally than of Zwingli, and yet he de- 
clared: "The Swiss may therefore be excused if 
they distrust the attempts at reunion; Luther's 
pride compels them to do so." 



94 John Calvin: Th£ Statesman. 



While dealing with his growing friendship with 
some of the German Reformers, it may be well to 
carry to the conclusion the facts touching Calvin's 
regard for Luther. Though not able to cultivate 
any first-hand knowledge of the chief hero of the 
Reformation, Calvin saw the heart of the German, 
and at a time later on when certain persons desir- 
ing to irritate Luther pointed out several passages 
in Calvin's works in which allusion was made to 
Luther and his followers in harsh terms Luther 
examined the passages, and said: "I hope Calvin 
will think better of me some day. We ought to 
bear with something from so excellent a man." 
Calvin related the facts, and added, "If we are not 
melted by so much gentleness we must be stones ; 
as for me, I am melted." 

John Calvin has been called, not without con- 
siderable justification, an exacting leader, stiffly 
jealous of antagonisms, harsh in his dictatorship, 
and impatient of any contradiction. But no one 
can read a letter he wrote to Bullinger, a Zwing- 
lian, and fail to see a largeness of soul far above the 
ordinary. "I implore you never to forget how great 
a man Luther is. Think with what courage, what 
constancy, what power he has devoted himself to 
spreading the doctrine of salvation far and near. 
As for me, I have often said, and I say it again, 
though he should call me a devil, I would still give 
him due honor, and recognize him in spite of the 
great faults which obscure his extraordinary vir- 
tues as a mighty servant of the Lord." 



Ysars of ExiiX 



95 



The presence of Calvin at the Colloquies reveals 
a man of unyielding consistency, and opposed to 
the advocates of compromise. In this he rivaled 
Luther himself. Though he acted a subordinate 
part, due to his unfamiliarity with the German 
tongue, he commanded the utmost respect from 
all persons for his learning and intellectual pene- 
tration. He doubted the sincerity of Charles V, 
Emperor, and set himself against the pacific intent 
of the conferences, then rather disposed to favor 
an alliance between the German Princes and Fran- 
cis I, the principal enemy of the Emperor. His 
correspondence with Marguerite of Valois, through 
his friend Sleidan, statesman and historian, is proof 
that his judgment was sought and his influence felt 
in questions that concerned the future of the Re- 
formed Church. But he had as little faith in Fran- 
cis I as in the Emperor. Writing to Farel, Sep- 
tember, 1 540, he says : "The King and the Emperor, 
while contending in cruel persecution of the godly, 
both endeavor to gain the favor of the Roman 
idol." No sign of the times escaped his keen eye. 
He visited the meeting at Frankfort to make the 
acquaintance of Melanchthon and to plead the 
cause of his fellow-countrymen suffering in the 
toils of bitter persecution. At the Colloquy of 
Worms, held November, 1540, he is seen in both 
public disputation and private solace of scholarship. 
For it was here that he defeated Robert Mosham, 
and won the title "The Theologian," and at the 



96 John Calvin: The Statesman. 



same place wrote in poetic form the triumph of 
Christ over His enemies, such as Eck and Coch- 
laeus. Calvin was not a poet by nature, and never 
distinguished himself as a writer of verse, yet he 
says in the concluding lines of this poem : 

''Quod natura negat, studii efftcit ardor;" by 
study he made up for the lack of genius. 

The Diet of Regensburg he attended very re- 
luctantly, not being suited to such work, as he 
affirmed, and feeling it to be a waste of time to 
deal with the legates sent from Rome by the Pope. 
He held Dr. Eck in contempt, as "a babbler and an 
impudent sophist." Eck had a stroke of apoplexy, 
and on his recovery Calvin wrote: "Nondum 
meretur mundus ista bestia liber ari" — the world 
had not yet earned its deliverance from that beast. 

The use of such caustic and even brutal phrases 
by so cultured a leader as Calvin will make credible 
the stories of the most vicious invectives hurled at 
each other by passionate theologians in the six- 
teenth century. No one seems to have had a 
monopoly of defamatory epithets, for Catholic and 
Protestant alike indulged, sometimes to the full, 
the disposition to use vile words against an antagon- 
ist. The air of the century was electric with harsh 
invective. The famous Bull of Pope Leo X against 
Luther leads the list of damnatory papers. Nor 
was the reply of the stout Reformer at all reticent 
in this regard. Even so mild a man as Erasmus 
called Farel "a lying, virulent, seditious soul." 



Years of Exiix 



97 



Henry VIII and Luther exchanged titles quite ob- 
noxious to ears polite in a later day. The habit 
had not died out even in the next century, for the 
great English poet, Milton, defended the cause of 
the Protestants with tremendous vigor and freedom 
of expression. Calvin's successor, Theodore Beza, 
a man of the highest culture and refinement, in dis- 
cussing the doctrine of the Eucharist with Eilman, 
the Lutheran who advocated the notion of "the real 
presence," calls him "an ass with a doctor's cap 
upon his head, a dog swimming in a bath, an 
asinine sophist, an impudent rogue, a sycophant, 
a polyphemus, a monster half monkey, half ogre, 
a carnivorous animal, a cyclops, a papist." 

These sturdy epithets cause us to doubt if their 
judgments can be relied upon in our attempt to 
deal fairly with both parties in the great contro- 
versy. The bias of the writers certainly vitiates 
the sources of the period. When Luther led the 
way it is not surprising that his followers were 
unwilling to lag far behind ; and yet none of them 
quite equaled him in his invidious epithets. He 
searches the pages of Terence, and when they fail 
him, he ransacks the peasants' vocabulary, and to 
him his opponents are lions, asses, bats, moles, 
goats, pigs. His range includes not only theo- 
logical but zoological nomenclature for bitter 
words with which he punishes his foes. 

Yet to his friends Calvin was the soul of tender 
devotion. During the period of the Colloquies his 
7 



98 John Calvin : Th£ Statesman. 

correspondence, is full of evidences of intimate 
associations. Not the least of his gains was his 
friendship with Melanchthon. They had become 
acquainted in October, 1538, and it was through 
Melanchthon that Calvin knew Luther and sent 
salutations to him. The cause of the Reformation 
was a real gainer by this, for Luther had fallen 
out with the earlier Swiss Reformers, being "in- 
curably poisoned" against Zwingli, and now that 
the conflict between the Protestants and the Cath- 
olics was deepening, it was fortunate that the old 
leader and the new had no occasion to revive 
slumbering hatreds or disagreements. Calvin was 
twelve years younger than Melanchthon, yet he 
was received by the German on equal terms. They 
were not unlike in some regards, in others far 
apart. Both were remarkably precocious as young 
students, and grew learned, polished and sensitive 
to all the appeals of the new learning. Both 
were modest, Calvin was shy and yet combative 
to a notable extent; Melanchthon, feminine and 
disposed to compromise, Calvin fearless, Me- 
lanchthon shrinking, but both heartily desirous 
of union in the ranks of the Protestants. 
Though they differed on some points of doc- 
trine they showed that theologians could cultivate 
true amity and spiritual harmony. After the Col- 
loquy they saw each other no more, but their cor- 
respondence reveals a noble type of intimacy. The 
lack of a swift post is noticed by Calvin in a let- 



YiJars otf Exile:. 



99 



ter to Melanchthon : "You see to what a lazy fellow 
you have entrusted your letter. It was full four 
months before he delivered it to me, and then 
crushed and crumpled with much usage." He ex- 
presses a wish that they "could oftener converse 
together were it only by letters. To you it would 
be no advantage; but to me, nothing in this world 
could be more desirable than to take solace in the 
mind and gentle spirit of your correspondence." 

In his reply Melanchthon confesses his inferi- 
ority as a writer, and yet suggests to Calvin that 
he bore down too hard upon the side of the Divine 
Sovereignty, and did not give fair play to the 
human will. As for himself he did not dare say 
that he had reached a solution of the abysses of 
predestination and free will, and adds: "Let us 
accuse our own will if we fall, and not find the 
cause in God." Nor could Calvin budge him from 
his milder view. There must have been something 
very fine in the esteem and affection which grew 
with the passing years, for as has been said, we 
have the only example of a Reformer republishing 
the work of another Reformer, a rival of his own 
work and differing from it in several points, in 
the act of Calvin when he issued and commended 
the "Theological Commonplaces" of Melanchthon. 

A year after the death of Melanchthon, which 
occurred in 1560, Calvin thus addressed his sainted 
friend : "O Philip Melanchthon ! for it is upon thee 
that I call, upon thee, who now livest with Christ 



ioo John Calvin: The Statesman. 

in God, and art waiting there for us, until we shall 
also be gathered with thee to that blessed rest ! A 
hundred times, worn out with fatigue and over- 
whelmed with care, thou didst lay thy head upon 
my breast, and say: "Would God that I might die 
here, on thy breast. And I, a thousand times since 
then have earnestly desired that it had been granted 
us to be together. Certainly thou wouldst have 
been more valiant to face danger, and stronger to 
despise hatred, and bolder to disregard false accu- 
sations. Thus the wickedness of many would have 
been restrained, whose audacity of insult was in- 
creased by what they called thy weakness." In 
this one can see the real affection between the 
two men, and also the grand self-confidence which 
the iron-willed leader of Geneva put at the dis- 
posal of his less courageous friend. 

It was during his stay at Strassburg that 
Calvin's power as a controversialist was put to the 
highest test, and with the fullest proof that he could 
debate without stooping to vilification. In his fa- 
mous reply to Sadolet, he vindicated the Reforma- 
tion in terms that left him alone of the band of 
Reformers at the top of fame, the most able, adroit, 
and convincing disputant of the century. His vic- 
tory was over a remarkable man. 

Jacopo Sadoleto, born 1477, died 1547, was sec- 
retary to Leo X, and spent his surplus cash for 
Greek manuscripts. His name is connected with 
one of the rarest "finds" of the age. One day in 



YSARS Otf ExilX 



IOI 



1506, some workmen ran to inform Sadolet that 
they had found in the gardens of Titus a group 
from an unknown but admirable Greek chisel. He 
hastened to the spot and discovered that the group 
was what is known as "The Laocoon," easily rec- 
ognized from Pliny's description. On account of 
the unearthing of the treasure Rome rang with 
jubilation, and in the evening the church bells 
pealed out the joy of the whole city. The day 
following the group was drawn in triumph to the 
Vatican. Sadolet was a veritable child of the 
Ranaissance. After serving as Secretary to Leo 
X, he became Bishop of Carpentras, in Dauphiny, 
then Secretary to Clement VII, and finally Cardi- 
nal, since 1536. He bore the reputation of a 
scholar, poet, devout gentleman, loyal Churchman. 
Beza does not do him justice in speaking of him 
as "a man of great eloquence, but he perverted it 
chiefly in suppressing the light of truth. He had 
been appointed cardinal for no other reason than 
that his moral respectability might serve to put a 
kind of gloss on false religion." Neither Protestant 
nor Catholic could then use the exact color to 
paint a motive or to interpret an action, when an 
enemy was involved in the picture. Both Sadolet 
and Calvin wrote in a style and with a power to do 
them both credit, save that Calvin's was the master 
mind. 

The time of Calvin's exile from Geneva was a 
shining opportunity for the Catholics, and the dis- 



io2 John Calvin: The: Statesman. 

possessed Bishop of Geneva saw his hour. He 
brought together several bishops, and as a result 
of their conference Sadolet was chosen to make an 
appeal to the Genevese. This he did in March, 
1539. His eloquence was notably persuasive, and 
his spirit without rancor. Perhaps the only blot in 
his address was an uncharitable reflection upon the 
character and motives of the Reformers. After 
using various arguments, based upon the antiquity, 
the unity, the universality, and the inerrancy of 
the Church, and pleading with the citizens of 
Geneva to return to the fold, he closed as follows : 
"Whatever I can possibly do although it is very 
little, still if I have any talent, skill, authority, in- 
dustry, I offer them to you and your interests, and 
will regard it as a great favor to myself should 
you be able to reap any fruit and advantage from 
my labor and assistance in things human and di- 
vine." 

The Council received the letter with polite ac- 
knowledgments, but found no one in Geneva able 
to make fitting reply, in which fact the Romanists 
found cause for encouragement. A copy of the 
letter fell into the hands of Calvin, and in six days 
he wrote an answer, and sent it September 1st, to 
Sadolet. He had not been mentioned by name in 
the address of Sadolet, yet he felt himself indirectly 
assailed as the chief disturber of the peace of 
Geneva. The letter of Calvin has been called "per- 
haps the ablest vindication of the Reformation to 



Years of Exiix 



103 



be found in the controversial literature of that 
time." 1 Step by step he discusses the points made 
by the Cardinal, and with consummate skill sets 
the cause of Protestantism fairly before the world. 
While paying tribute to the learning of the Cardi- 
nal, and refraining from insinuations as to his op- 
ponent's lack of good faith, and while expressing 
reluctance to oppose him, yet with frankness and 
dignity he crushes the Cardinal's position : 

"If you had attacked me in my private character, I 
would easily have forgiven the attack, in consideration of 
your learning, and in honor of letters. But when I see 
that my ministry, which I feel assured is supported and 
sanctioned by a call from God, is wounded through my 
side, it would be perfidy, not patience, were I here to be 
silent and connive." 

So he marches forward. Answering the charge 
that he had left the Church of Rome because of 
disappointment, he says: 

"Had I wished to consult my own interest, I would 
never have left your party. ... I have no fear that 
any one not possessed of shameless effrontery will object 
to me, that out of the kingdom of the pope I sought for 
any personal advantage which was not there ready to my 
hand." 

The Cardinal's beautiful picture of an ideal 
Catholicism is spoiled by the Reformer in a descrip- 
tion of the abuses and corruptions of the Church 
from which sprang the Reformation. Calvin paints 



1 Dr. P. Schaff. 



io4 John Calvin: Ths Statesman. 



with dark colors, confirmed, however, by the lives 
of such Popes as Alexander VI and by the charges 
of Savonarola, and the impartial witness of Mac- 
chiavelli, the religion of Rome. As to the asser- 
tion of Sadolet that the only aim of the Reformers 
in casting off the heavy yoke of Rome was to get 
freedom for licentiousness, he compares conduct 
with conduct. 

"We abound, indeed, in numerous faults; too often do 
we sin and fall. Still, though truth would, modesty will 
not permit me to boast how far we excel you in every 
respect, unless perchance you except Rome, that famous 
abode of sanctity, which having burst asunder the cords 
of pure discipline, and trodden all honor under foot, has 
so overflowed with all kinds of iniquity, that scarcely any- 
thing so abominable has ever been before." 

The personal note is struck in Calvin's match- 
less reply to the citation of the Cardinal to the 
Reformers to appear as criminals before the judg- 
ment seat of God to answer for the guilt of the 
"great seditions and schisms ;" in this he reaches a 
truly dramatic power of statement in an imaginary 
counter-confession on the part of the Reformers, 
in which while he no doubt lines up all the Reform- 
ers before the throne of God, yet the spokesman is 
Calvin himself, reciting his own struggles in leav- 
ing the Church. The only other place in which he 
so specifically refers to his own experience is in his 
introduction to the Commentary on the Psalms. 

"They charged me with two of the worst of crimes — 
heresy and schism. And the heresy was, that I dared to 



Ye)ars of Exir,s. 



105 



protest against dogmas which they had received. But 
what could I have done? I heard from Thy mouth that 
there was no other light of truth which could direct our 
souls into the way of life, than that which was kindled 
by Thy Word. I heard that whatever human minds of 
themselves conceive concerning Thy Majesty, the wor- 
ship of Thy Deity, and the mysteries of Thy religion, was 
vanity. I heard that their introducing into the Church 
instead of Thy Word, doctrines sprung from the human 
brain, was sacrilegious presumption. . . . That I might 
perceive these things, Thou, O Lord, did'st shine upon me 
with the brightness of Thy Spirit; that I might compre- 
hend how impious and noxious they were, Thou did'st 
bear before me the torch of Thy Word ; that I might abom- 
inate them as they deserved, Thou didst stimulate my 
soul; . . ." (He tells how solemn expiations failed to 
bring peace). . . . "When, however, I had performed 
all these things, though I had some intervals of quiet, I 
was still far off from true peace of conscience; for, when- 
ever I descended into myself, or raised my mind to Thee, 
extreme terror seized me — terror which no expiations or 
satisfactions could cure. And the more closely I examined 
myself, the sharper the stings with which my conscience 
was pricked, so that the only solace which remained to me, 
was to delude myself by obliviousness. Still as nothing 
better offered, I continued the course which I had begun, 
when lo ! a very different form of doctrine started up, not 
one which led us away from the Christian profession, but 
one which brought it back to its fountain-head, and as it 
were, clearing away the dross, restored it to its original 
purity. . . . My mind being now prepared for serious 
attention, I at length perceived, as if light had broken in 
upon me, in what a sty of error I had wallowed, and how 
much pollution and impurity I had thereby contracted. 
Being exceedingly alarmed at the misery into which I had 
fallen, and much more at that which threatened me in 



106 John Calvin: The Statesman. 

view of eternal death, I as in duty bound made it my first 
business to betake myself to Thy way, condemning my 
past life, not without groans and tears." 

He closes the virile document with a direct ap- 
peal to the Cardinal: 

"May the Lord grant, Sadolet, that you and all 
your party may at length perceive that the only true bond 
of Church unity is Christ the Lord, who has reconciled 
us to God the Father, and will gather us out of our present 
dispersion into the fellowship of His body, that so, through 
His one Word and Spirit, we may grow together into one 
heart and one soul." 

The Answer was instantly welcomed in many 
quarters as an entire reply. The impression proved 
deep and lasting. It was put into several languages. 
The papal party at Geneva gave up all hope of re- 
storing the Mass.- When Luther read it he said 
to Cruciger : "This answer has hands and feet, and 
I rejoice that God has raised up men who will 
give the last blow to popery, and finish the war 
against anti-Christ which I began." 

The prestige of Calvin attained a notable height 
as a result of this controversy, and the hope of his 
return to Geneva on the part of his friends there 
became increasingly marked. But the hour did 
not come immediately. Meanwhile he gave his at- 
tention to study, to instruction, and to organiza- 
tion in' Strassburg. His career was one of inces- 
sant toil. Calvin was one of the world's workers. 
Few men have ever flung themselves into their 
work as this abstemious, self-denying, sickly 
scholar, consumed with a desire to establish his 



Ysars of Exiix 



107 



system beyond a peradventure. The model after 
which the Reformed Churches in Geneva and 
France were formed was shaped by him during 
his residence in Strassburg. No item which could 
in any way have to do with the success of his 
great experiment was overlooked. He was 
preacher, teacher, builder, theologian and practi- 
cal manager. His first sermon was delivered in 
the Church of St. Nicholas, though afterwards he 
preached in the church now known as the Magdalen 
Kirche. Twice a day on Sunday and four times 
during the week he appealed to the thought and 
conscience of his French congregation. He intro- 
duced his favorite discipline, and being left undis- 
turbed by the magistracy he succeeded far better 
than he had done in Geneva. His correspondence 
was large. He was a busy pastor, was consulted 
by the magistrates on all important questions con- 
cerning religion, and gave himself to numberless 
persons who came to consult him upon private 
matters. He found time to compose his Commen- 
taries on St. Paul's Epistles, and rewrote and en- 
larged his Institutes. 

A worthy fruit of his pastorate was the Liturgy 
which he introduced in Strassburg and later in 
Geneva. Farel had used a form for worship, con- 
sisting of a general prayer, the Lord's Prayer (be- 
fore the Sermon), the Decalogue, confession of 
sins, repetition of the Lord's Prayer, the Apostles' 
Creed, a final exhortation and the benediction. Of 



io8 John Calvin: Ths Statesman. 



his liturgy only the form for marriage survived. 
All the rest was recast by Calvin, and thus used ' 
in his church. In 1542 it was published twice and 
taken up by the congregation at Lausanne and so 
gradually adopted by other Reformed Churches. 
His Liturgy revealed the dislike entertained by 
Calvin of all the cumbrous ceremonial of the Ro- 
man Church. He had no taste for the artistic and 
ornamental features of worship, indeed leaned to- 
wards the rather bare and sermon-loaded service 
of the Puritan age. He magnified the pulpit, free 
prayer, and congregational singing. Beyond this 
simple outline he did not encourage his followers 
to venture. Though he did not favor the use of the 
organ in public worship, he emphasized to the full 
the value of congregational singing, and made much 
use of the Psalms and of Clement Marot's verse, 
and even making seven of his own compositions 
serve the cause of worship in the Church. His 
form for public service, substantially that of the 
French Reformed Churches to-day, was as fol- 
lows: invocation, confession of sin, a brief absolu- 
tion, reading of the Scriptures, singing, free prayer, 
chanting of the Psalms by the congregation, the 
sermon, the long general prayer, the Lord's Prayer, 
singing and benediction. Calvin prepared forms 
for baptism and the holy communion. As to the 
method of baptism Calvin regarded immersion as 
the primitive mode, but any other mode as equally 
valid. 1 The Sacrament was taken once a month, 

Unst. 4; XV; No. 19. 



Yejars of Exiix 109 

from which, however, all unworthy applicants were 
excluded. 

Calvin did not become so utterly absorbed in 
the progress of the Church as not to realize that 
man should not live alone. He said in his comment 
on Ephesians v, 28-33 : * s a thing against na- 
ture that any one should not love his wife, for God 
has ordained marriage in order that two may be 
made one person." Yet he seems to have been in 
no haste to find a help-meet, nor did he marry until 
1540. He rather boasted that he could not be 
charged with having assailed Rome, as the Greeks 
had Troy, for the sake of a woman. His friends, 
Farel and Bucer, often urged him to take a wife, 
that he might not be at the mercy of an ill-tempered 
housekeeper. His love-making was not that of a 
romancer, for in writing to Farel, May, 1539, he 
says : "I am none of those insane lovers, who when 
once smitten with the fine figure of a woman, em- 
brace also her faults. This is the only beauty which 
allures me, if she be chaste, obliging, not fastidious, 
economical, patient, and careful for my health. 
Therefore, set out immediately." If this sounds 
cold-blooded, it must be remembered that the time 
was the sixteenth century, and the man half-Stoic. 
Farel evidently was unable to solve the problem, 
and the matter was dropped for awhile. The next 
move was to consider a certain lady of noble rank 
who had been recommended to him, her brother 
being a fervent admirer of Calvin, but this fell 



no John Calvin: Tut Statesman. 

through. Yet again he came near marrying a lady 
who was highly commended to him, and went so 
far as to invite Farel to the proposed wedding. 
But reports of her led him to drop the engagement. 
Finally he married a member of his congregation, 
Idelette de Bure, the widow of a prominent Ana- 
baptist, who had been converted to the true faith 
under Calvin's teaching. Her gentle, modest, and 
yet firm character won the love of the Reformer, 
and they lived in happy wedlock for nine years. 
She proved to be a real help-meet, called by her 
husband "the excellent companion of my life." 
She had several children by her first husband, and 
one by Calvin, a son, who died in infancy, 1542. 
Of the death of this son Calvin wrote to a friend: 
"God has given me a little son, and taken him away ; 
but I have myriads of children in the whole Chris- 
tian world." The miserable slanders of such writ- 
ers as Bolsec and Audin touching the home life 
of Calvin and his cold indifference to his losses 
of son, and later, of his wife, are utterly refuted 
by letters and expressions to his various friends. 
Calvin was not a man to carry his heart around on 
exhibition for the curious multitude to gaze at. 
He felt deeply, but seldom gave to the public his 
private joys and griefs. 

Calvin's stay in Strassburg was of utmost mo- 
ment to him ; he had made friends, won a wife, 
tried successfully his programme in the church of 
which he was pastor, had learned the weakness of 



Years o? Exile. 



hi 



the German system, and in all that counts for mas- 
tery of problems big with the world's destiny, was 
not less firm but more tactful, not less earnest but 
with a surer tread, wiser, broader, and in every 
way matured and capable of facing the main enter- 
prise of his life. 



CHAPTER VII. 



RETURN TO GENEVA. 

On leaving France for his journey which ter- 
minated in Geneva, in 1536, Calvin had said in 
pathetic phrase: "I am driven from the land of my 
birth. Every step towards its boundaries costs me 
tears. Perhaps it is not permitted to Truth to 
dwell in France; let her lot be mine." He had 
since then followed Truth at some hazard, and was 
still some distance from the goal. In 1538 he had 
taken up his march, burning with ill-suppressed 
indignation over his treatment by the people of 
Geneva. Weaker men had stepped into his shoes. 
Worse men were at the helm of Genevan affairs. 
Reactions came and went with little prospects of 
good for the city, and even dissensions between 
Calvin's brethren in the city augured ill for the 
cause so dear to the exile. The advantage taken 
of this condition on the part of the Catholics 
reached its height in the incident of Sadolet's appeal 
and the reply of Calvin, after which the bishops 
could have little expectations of recovering lost 
ground in Geneva. But other conditions made it 
imperative that the Reformation should not lose out 



RETURN TO GENEVA. II3 



in the city. In the summer of 1540 Bern and 
Geneva were about to jump at each other's throats. 
The turbulent elements in the city called for effec- 
tive efforts at control. As the autumn drew on 
the party that had supported Calvin got the gov- 
ernment in their hands, but the populace can hardly 
be said to have wished him back. 

The time was critical, both for Geneva and 
the larger Protestant world. During the years of 
Calvin's exile Loyola founded the Order of the 
Jesuits; then occurred the reaction under Henry 
VIII in England, when the Six Articles were is- 
sued by Parliament denning heresy, and compelling 
belief in transubstantiation, communion in. one kind 
for laymen, celibacy of the clergy, inviolability of 
vows of chastity, necessity of private masses, and 
of auricular confession. Charles V was in tem- 
porary alliance with Francis I, in whose realm the 
political rights of the parliaments were being re- 
stricted, and the religious freedom of the Protest- 
ants was denied; Spain and France were entering 
the New World — De Soto in 1539 ranging the Mis- 
sissippi Valley, Cartier in 1540 taking the St. Law- 
rence for his king, Pizarro in 1541 the Amazon, 
through his subordinate, Orellano ; — the Lutherans 
and Zwinglians were unable to get together; and 
quite as significant, while the various Colloquies 
held on German soil between Catholic and Prot- 
estants until 1 541 threw the Protestants back on 
themselves and widened the gap between themselves 
8 



ii4 John Calvin: Th£ Statesman. 

and their enemies, yet disunion with Catholicism 
did not mean union among Protestants. Further, 
while a lamentable apathy was settling down upon 
the Reformers and they were confining their ener- 
gies to a defensive opposition, the old Church 
began to stir with a new missionary zeal, for 
reform at home and expansion abroad. 

The tiny republic had rushed to the brink of 
ruin during Calvin's absence. As his keen eye 
had foreseen, demoralization began to dog the steps 
of his enemies. In the place of the expelled preach- 
ers, two native and two Bernese preachers were 
elected, but they were below mediocrity. The 
three parties, those opposed to the Reformers and 
Catholics alike, extreme liberals, those working for 
the restoration of Catholicism, and those friendly 
to the Reformers involved the affairs of the city 
in confusion. The claim of right of Bern to act as 
protector if not dictator of Geneva was highly 
unpopular. The first party gradually declined, as 
they proved unable to check the tide of immorality 
and disorder; the second party had no command- 
ing influence after the crushing letter of Calvin 
in reply to that of Sadolet; the third party kept 
on insisting upon the old franchises of Geneva as 
against the Bernese claims, and gained influence as 
the Catholics lost ground. 

In the early months of 1 540, a general assembly 
of citizens resolved to restore the former status. 
The recall of Calvin was decided upon in the Coun- 



Return to Geneva. 



cil, September 21, 1540. Meanwhile, private ef- 
forts had been made to obtain his consent to return 
to Geneva; but in his reply to Farel he said: 
"There is no place in the world which I fear more ; 
not because I hate it, but because I feel unequal to 
the difficulties which await me there." He re- 
quested Farel and Yiret to desist from their efforts 
to draw him back to the city; however, he added: 
"When I remember that in this matter I am not 
my own master, I present my heart as a sacrifice 
and I offer it up to the Lord.'' He herein con- 
sciously or unwittingly refers to his seal ; it bears 
the motto to which he gave expression in his let- 
ter, and the emblem is a hand presenting a heart to 
God. Petitions and even deputations were for- 
warded to Strassburg to complete his surrender to 
the duty thus urged upon him. The Registres of 
Geneva contain numerous records during the month 
of October touching the recall of "the learned and 
pious Air. Calvin." 

The Syndics and Council wrote him an appeal, 
which it is worth while to lay upon the page in full : 

"Sir, our good brother, and excellent friend, in recom- 
mending ourselves to you very affectionately, inasmuch 
as we are perfectly assured that your desire is only for 
the increase and advancement of the glory and honor of 
God and of His holy word, on the part of our small, our 
great, and our general councils (which all have urgently 
urged us to do this), we pray you very affectionately to 
be pleased to come to us, and return to your former part 
and ministry; and we hope, with the assistance of God, 



n 6 John Calvin: The Statesman. 

that this will be cause of great good and fruit for the aug- 
mentation of the holy Gospel. Our people are very desir- 
ous to have you. And we will so arrange matters with 
you that you shall have occasion to be satisfied. 

Your good friends, 
The; Syndics and Council of Geneva." 
Geneva, 22nd, Oct. 1540. 

The incidents of Calvin's recall and return to 
Geneva show us a man of noble purposes, anxious 
to do his highest duty, fearful of mistake, seeking 
advice from many friends, delaying his acceptance 
of the invitation until it could no longer be put 
off, and then securing the best results of the ac- 
ceptance by conditions presented to him and al- 
lowed by the authorities, as worthy of the man 
whom they had exiled and now discovered they 
could not live without. The letters of this period 
as given by Bonnet reveal the man, timid, brave, 
just to himself and to his friends, loving Geneva, 
ambitious for God, not lacking on the other hand 
the confidence in himself without which no man 
can serve his day to the fulL 

Strassburg protested against his departure, say- 
ing he could not be spared. The leaders of public 
opinion in Germany and Switzerland expressed 
their mind that the fate of Geneva was wrapped up 
in that of evangelical religion, and with this city 
went Italy and France, and that Calvin was the 
man to whom they might well look for the direc- 
tion of their destiny. As of old, Farel thundered 
away: "Will you wait till the stones call thee?" 



RETURN TO GSNSVA. 



117 



Unable to resist the call of God, as he had now 
come to regard it, Calvin left Strassburg in the 
summer of 1541, and went forward to Geneva es- 
corted by a mounted herald. The city was on the 
lookout for him. There was talk of a great recep- 
tion, but his distaste for a noisy welcome prevented 
any demonstration of an unusual sort. Yet there 
was general rejoicing when on September 13th he 
reached Geneva. Three days later he wrote to his 
old friend, Farel : "Thy wish is granted, I am held 
fast here. May God give His blessing!" The 
house and garden which was provided for him had 
belonged to a canon of the Cathedral, and was 
bought by the authorities of Geneva in 1543. It 
was only a few steps from the Church of St. Peter, 
and stood on the site of the present Number 11 
Rue de Calvin. The original house has been re* 
moved, the site being built upon anew in the 
eighteenth century. For a short while Calvin lived 
in the house adjoining until the one purchased by 
the Council was fitted for his permanent home, 
and there he remained until his death. The furnish- 
ing was very simple, the salary was set at five hun- 
dred florins, and as he was expected to entertain 
prominent visitors, he was voted £ii allowance of 
wheat and wine. The salary has been variously 
computed, as to its present purchasing power, from 
fifty to fifteen hundred dollars, but by the latest 
French author of the life of Calvin, as not exceed- 
ing one thousand dollars. 1 

iSee full note in Walker's comment on Doumergue's estimate, 
p. 264. 



n8 John Calvin: Ths Statesman. 

On the very day of his arrival Calvin appeared 
by agreement before the Syndics and the Council 
in the Town Hall, and asked for the appointment of 
a commission of six to draw up a plan for Church 
government and discipline. This was done, and 
the task immediately taken up of directing the re- 
ligious and moral, and as it soon followed, the 
social, life of Geneva. Calvin was conciliatory, 
but there was no delay in the prosecution of his 
scheme. The constitution, or Ordinances, as they 
were styled, went up to the Little Council, Septem- 
ber 26th, to the Large Council November 9th, and 
to the general assembly of the citizens November 
20, 1 541. 

That the authorities did not intend to take Cal- 
vin as a ruler, only as an adviser, is apparent in the 
refusal of the Little Council to submit to the min- 
isters the changed draft before it went to the Two 
Hundred. Nevertheless the Ecclesiastical Consti- 
tution of 1 54 1 is in marked advance beyond the 
Articles of 1537; "not indeed quite perfect, but 
passable considering the difficulty of the times," 
remarked Calvin. The Church got self-control, 
but none over political matters. The Church se- 
cured an effective discipline over its members in 
matters pertaining to doctrine and life, thus putting 
the Church of Geneva far ahead of any other Prot- 
estant body of the day. 

Calvin's theory of the Church, and of the State, 
and of the relation between the two was well de- 
fined before his arrival; his mind was too mature, 



Return to Geneva. 



119 



and his experience too thorough, to leave any doubt 
in the matter. His mind was rarely architectonic 
in character. The idea of a Divine Commonwealth, 
a "Civitas Dei," was ever before him, swaying his 
thought and commanding his will. In contrasting 
Luther with Calvin, Dr. Fairbairn says: "Luther's 
aim was to teach a true soteriology, Calvin's to 
build a system and a State in the image of the truth 
of God." The distinction between the "visible" 
and the "invisible" Church was one introduced by 
the Reformers. By this they meant two classes 
of Christians within the same objective communion. 
The invisible Church is in the visible, as kernel in 
the shell, and God alone knows who belong to the 
invisible Church and are to be saved. Luther had 
first applied the term "invisible" to the true Church 
at the disputation of Leipzig. Yet the Reformed 
system of doctrine was compelled to admit that 
there is possibility of salvation beyond the boun- 
daries of the visible Church. Perhaps none was so 
liberal as Zwingli in his inclusion of all the "pious 
heathen in the invisible Church. While Calvin did 
not go so far as Zwingli in his doctrine of election, 
yet logically the extension may be allowed. For 
salvation depends upon the sovereign grace of God, 
and not upon any objective or formal means of 
grace. He says in one place: "According to the 
secret predestination of God, there are many sheep 
without the pale of the Church, and many wolves 
within it." 



i2o John Calvin: Ths Statesman. 

Before taking up in detail the administrative 
measures of the Ordinances, it will be well to push 
inquiry still further into the significance of Calvin's 
purpose to recover for the Church whatever of 
authority it had lost in the troublous days of his 
absence from Geneva. In his aim he drew some- 
what near to that of the Roman Church in its em- 
phasis upon autonomy, its right of self-government. 
But he made a distinction; for while the Catholic 
used the word "autonomy" in a hierarchical sense, 
Calvin placed the power in the hands of the Chris- 
tian congregation. And while he did not succeed 
in his day in making the clergy independent of State 
patronage, he taught that self-government implied 
and required self-support. The Lutherans allowed 
the heavy hand of the secular princes to indulge 
an arbitrary policy, giving the congregations of 
most Lutheran countries of Europe no voice in the 
election of their pastors. German Switzerland rec- 
ognized the supreme power of- the civil government. 
In theory, the Churches established by Calvin 
claimed independence for the Church in all spirit- 
ual matters. The sovereignty of the Church was 
inherent in its membership. His argument springs 
from the old rule : "Let him who is to rule over all, 
be chosen by all." Scotland, and then America 
saw the full fruition of this planting. He contended 
that the bishops and the presbyters were originally 
identical, yet did not refuse to accept the super- 
vision of bishops, as in England, provided the Gos- 



Return to Geneva. 121 



pel were truly preached. More important than the 
above was Calvin's demand that the laity should 
share in Church government and discipline. Rome 
refused to laymen rights in ecclesiastical legisla- 
tion ; Calvin taught the priesthood of all believers, 
and gave them regular duties in the local congre- 
gations, the Synod and the Council of the Churches. 

In approaching Calvin's theory of the relation 
of the Church to the State we find difficulty. He 
has been styled a theocrat. He did indeed aim at 
the sole rule of Christ in Church and State, but 
free from any entanglement between the two. Cal- 
vin endeavored to distinguish what was in his day 
greatly confused, the difference between the spir- 
itual and the secular powers. Each was to be in- 
dependent and sovereign in its own sphere. He 
himself never held a civil office, nor did he allow 
the ministers to be eligible to the magistracy. The 
internal affairs of the Church were to be free from 
the interference of the civil authorities. Yet he 
failed to separate the two provinces; rather he 
dared to unite them as far as their unlike functions 
would permit. In practice in Geneva the two were 
more nearly interdependent than in theory, and the 
Reformed Church of Geneva was an established or 
State Church, the preachers and the magistrates 
often intermeddling with each other. "Discipline 
was a common territory for both." It was a long 
distance to the time when the great Italian, Cavour, 
cried out, "A free Church in a free State." 



122 John Calvin: The Statesman. 

The reference to Italy, so many ages hampered 
by the anomaly of the double rule of the Pope, at 
once prince and priest, suggests the value of a 
swift review of the effort of the papacy to bring 
the world to its way of thought and life. 

Both the true and the false rise to our vision. 
There was first the scheme and the failure of the 
Imperial Church under Constantine and Theo- 
dosius. The world was not ready for the experi- 
ment, and the trial could be only partial. The 
problem in its entirety was not grasped by its 
proposers. Then came the aim and the failure of 
the Mediaeval Church; the "fatal dualism," that of 
the claim to both spiritual and secular power balked 
its most desperate zeal. The meaning of the "king- 
dom of God" escaped the conception of the clerical 
orders, and the "Mediaeval System, long hollowed 
out and destitute of spiritual force, was blown to 
pieces by the Reformation." 

Nevertheless, there remained the idea of unity 
and of some form of an organized social system 
inspired by Christian truth. But the difference be- 
tween the formal and the essential unity grew 
plainer with each passing decade of struggle after 
the ideal. The Mediaeval Church had insisted upon 
unity to the hurt of the individual, whereas the 
New Testament had taught that the Spirit was to 
work first in the person, and then through him in 
the community. The free Churches, not the tyrant 
Church, were in its long and glorious perspective. 



RETURN TO G^NSVA. 1 23 



The unity of Christenclom must recognize the free 
development of all its parts working with unim- 
paired liberty for the total good. Thus the task 
of the Reformation was to light all the branches of 
the mysterious candlestick of the Apocalypse. But 
this did not mean that the work of the Reformation 
was mainly destructive of previous and real gains, 
nor tending to the disintegration of any vital forces, 
or institution worthy of longer life. Protestantism 
is primarily a builder, not a destroyer. And if in 
its earlier days it assumed the form and exhibited 
the might of a deformer, and not of a reformer, 
this was only incidental. Its eye was ever fixed 
upon a sounder fabric, grounded upon the free 
consent of men. The history of its spread has an- 
swered to the full Comte's habitual scorn of Prot- 
estantism, on the ground of its "purely negative 
doctrine," and "the anarchical character of its prin- 
ciples." For when we sum it all up, we find the 
Reformation^due to a positive religious conviction; 
it began an era of popular enlightenment ; it lifted 
up the laity ; it awoke the national spirit in Europe. 
On the Rhine it was Luther appealing to Germany 
to assert itself against the Pope on the Tiber; on 
the Thames it was Latimer and Ridley defying 
the threats and fagots of the fanatic queen inspired 
by the Italian cardinal ; the Dutch around the Zuy- 
der Zee shaking off the tyranny of the Spaniard; 
in France the exiled Huguenots becoming aliens 
to their native land rather than traitors to God. 



124 John Calvin: The: Statesman. 

In no other way could the "fiction of the Empire 
and the yoke of the Pope" have been cast aside. 
The Reformers were not rough iconoclasts of a 
wholesome social order or of a pure and tender 
ecclesiastical discipline. They were not unprac- 
tical nor idle dreamers, but those who lived and 
died to make their dreams come true. Their lib- 
erty has been that of a popular constitution; wit- 
ness England, Scotland, Holland, Switzerland, and 
America. 

The trend of thought to John Calvin is evident, 
and its realization prior to his day in at least one 
illustrious instance is easily recalled. Calvin did 
not originate the notion, the achievement, of a 
Christian city. Every reader of "Romola" who 
brings any degree of sympathy to the study 
of the close of the fifteenth century in Flor- 
ence must have some insight into the ideals 
and the source of power of the mighty Re- 
former-Preacher of San Marco. Savonarola 
forever charms and does not tire those who 
still cherish the hope of influencing public life by 
Christian motives. In an age which recognized 
Roderick Borgia as the vicar of St. Peter, the elo- 
quent monk, sustained by a noble philosophy, and 
at the same time a fervent follower of Christ, came 
to Florence by invitation of Lorenzo de Medici, 
and for awhile seemed to cast over his vast talents 
a benignant spell. But under the splendid, cruel 
rule of Lozenzo virtue, political and moral, was 



Return to Geneva. 



125 



moribund. To some the alternative lay between 
ruthless despotism and a licentious democracy. But 
the stout-hearted, clear-brained prophet refused to 
cherish any other vision than that of Florence as a 
true city of God, and after the death of Lorenzo 
and the expulsion of his weak son, Piero. Savon- 
arola became the dictator of Florence (1494-1497). 
For four years he governed the city justly, and 
gained good terms from the King of France. But 
the Pope was set on his overthrow ; the Medicean 
party yearned for the "good old days/' and his 
course was soon run, as he had prophesied. The 
election of a hostile Singoria was followed by the 
papal excommunication and condemnation to the 
cord and the flame, and in the strangle and the 
ashes ended Savonarola's attempt to create a Chris- 
tian city on the banks of the Arno. 

From the monk of San Marco to the preacher 
of St. Pierre is less than forty years. On the other 
side of the Alps and under auspicious skies Calvin 
laid the foundation of the public life of Geneva in 
religion. He drew up a Confession which every 
one was required to sign. Church and State were 
not identical, but they were not separated. In his 
"Confessions" Rousseau tells us that when he went 
to Geneva in 1754 it was necessary for him to sign 
the Confession of Faith before he could become a 
citizen of the city. 

If it is inquired how, in the one case four short 
years, and in the other nearly three centuries, swept 



126 John Calvin: Ths Statesman. 



by, marking now the brief and now the unspent 
power of the two reformers, the answer may easily 
be found. Antitheses do not always separate the 
grain from the chaff, but there is much truth in the 
old statement that Catholicism is a religion of 
priests, Lutheranism of theologians, Calvinism of 
the believing congregation. In his emphasis of the 
solidarity of the Church Calvin made Geneva a 
fair rival of Rome, and in his effort to reform the 
morals of the city he wrought out a discipline as 
rigorous for the glory of Geneva as any that Rome 
had ever, in repressing heresy, fostered to her 
shame. Yet Calvin's calm disclaimer of any pur- 
pose to merge the State and the Church into one as 
an executioner of law-breakers, is set forth in his 
statement that the Church knows no penalty for 
wrong doing save exclusion from the Lord's Sup- 
per. "For the Church hath not the power of the 
sword to punish or restrain, no empire to command, 
no prison, no other pains which the magistrate is 
wont to lay upon men." 1 But what if, is the im- 
mediate inquiry, the State has become so inter- 
penetrated with the passion of the Church for re- 
form that the lines of cleavage can not be discerned, 
and the temptation is inevitable to make out of 
offenses against the Church crimes against the civil 
order? Plainly we shall have a reign of terror, 
peculiar but explicable, and it hideous yet tremend- 
ously effective. When the adulterer was put to 



Unst. 4, ii, 3. 



Return To Geneva. 127 



death, and the unchaste were banished or drowned, 
Geneva was in such case as a hundred other cities 
of Europe, Catholic and Protestant, but when to 
laugh at a sermon of Calvin was made a crime, 
the honest human heart cries out against the holi- 
ness which is secured at the expense of freedom 
and the virtue which is stamped with the tyranny 
of a moral police. 

It is evident that the principles of Church gov- 
ernment advocated by Calvin led to persecution. 
He was not different from his age, save that he 
calmly and without retreat or hiding accepted all 
the consequences of his theory. In a theocratic 
State heresy is as obnoxious to orthodoxy as an 
ordinary crime is to the civil law. In a letter to 
Somerset, the Protestant Protector of England, Cal- 
vin elaborates, October 22, 1548, his theory of the 
necessity of applying force against heresy. 

"From what I understand, my Lord, you have two 
kinds of rebels who have risen up against the King and 
the State of the realm. The one are fantastic people, who 
under colour of the gospel would cast all into confusion; 
the other, obstinate adherents to the superstitions of the 
Roman Anti-christ. Both alike well deserve to be re- 
pressed by the sword which is committed to you, seeing 
that they attack not the King only, but God who has seated 
him upon the throne, and has entrusted to you the protec- 
tion as well of his person as of his majesty." 



CHAPTER VIII. 



THE NEW DISCIPLINE. 

John Calvin was lawyer as well as preacher. 
His legal training stood him in good stead in the 
organization of the system of doctrine, polity, and 
discipline for Geneva. His stress laid upon the 
inner life, intellectual and spiritual, saved him from 
being a tyrant after the order of Hildebrand. As 
it was, he did not escape caricature, censure, scorn. 
But he succeeded in imposing his will upon a peo- 
ple who in the end greatly profited by his coming, 
in morals, good order, intelligence, influence among 
neighbors, and renown. How did he do it? 

In the application of the general principles noted 
in the preceding chapter, Calvin insisted upon mak- 
ing them the fundamental law of the city. The re- 
sult is seen in the "Ecclesiastical Ordinances," 
which were solemnly ratified January 2, 1542, as 
the Church law of Geneva. In themselves they are 
an interesting milestone of progress, and in ad- 
dition they are of vast concern as having passed 
into the life of most of the Reformed and. Presby- 
terian Churches of the Old and the New World. 
The official text begins with the following words: 
128 



The New Discipline. 129 



"In the name of God Almighty, we the Syndics, Small 
and Great Councils with our people assembled at the sound 
of the trumpet and the great clock, according to our an- 
cient customs, have considered that the matter above all 
others worthy of recommendation is to preserve the doc- 
trine of the holy gospel of our Lord in its purity, to pro- 
tect the Christian Church, to instruct faithfully the youth, 
and to provide a hospital for the proper support of the 
poor, — all of which can not be done without a definite 
order and rule of life, from which every estate may learn 
the duty of its office. For this reason we have deemed it 
wise to reduce the spiritual government, such as our Lord 
has shown us and instituted by His Word, to a good form 
to be introduced and observed among us. Therefore we 
have ordered and established to follow and to guard in our 
city and territory the following ecclesiastical polity, taken 
from the gospel of Jesus Christ." 

Calvin's effort was to bring to the front two 
mutually corrective powers — the clergy and the 
laity. Nowhere else in all history have the clergy 
been so prominent and influential as in the Church 
of Geneva. The distinction made by Calvin be- 
tween the extraordinary officers of the Church and 
the ordinary is worth remembering, for the reason 
that the former can not be regulated by law, and 
no directions are to be found in the Ordinances for 
them. The distinction, however, is made in the 
Institutes, and under the first head are found Apos- 
tles, Prophets, and Evangelists; and under the 
second head are Pastors, Teachers, Ancients, and 
Deacons. Pastors are Bishops and Ancients are 
Lay-Elders. In his elaboration of the duties of 
9 



130 John Calvin: The: Statesman. 

these various classes Calvin exhibited the analytic 
skill of a lawyer in the days of Justinian, and gave 
to his "code" a permanent character which stood 
firm in the court of Scotland and the frontiers of 
America with equal ease and force. It would be 
tedious to recite the many specifications of service 
which filled the minds of Calvin's friends with pro- 
found concern, and the hearts of his foes with pro- 
founder disgust, but one must know somewhat of 
the working plan of the ' 'Ordinances" in order to 
appreciate the mind and will of Calvin and their 
effect upon Geneva. 

The "Pastors" are to "preach the Word of God, 
to instruct, to admonish, to exhort, and reprove in 
public and private, to administer the Sacraments, 
and jointly with the 'elders' to exercise discipline." 
Pastors are such only after being called, examined, 
ordained, or installed. Weekly conferences are to 
be held for mutual aid. Strict discipline is to be 
exercised over the ministers, and a dozen or more 
vices and sins are named which can not be toler- 
ated among them. The pastors are to preach twice 
on Sunday and to catechise the children, and to 
preach three times during the week. Teachers are 
to instruct believers in sound doctrine. They are 
distinguished from pastors, in that they have no 
official concern with discipline, nor can they ad- 
minister the sacraments. The highest type of 
teacher was the theological professor. The "An- 
cients" or lay elders, were an important feature of 



The New Discipline. 



the "Ordinances," perhaps the most original con- 
tribution thereto. 

It is this name and office that have given to the 
Presbyterian Church its name and type of polity. 
Yet it may be doubted if some of the modern elders 
would recognize themselves in the following state- 
ment of duties : 

"The office of the elders is to watch over the conduct 
of every individual, to admonish lovingly those whom they 
see doing wrong or leading an irregular life. When there 
is need, they should la}' the matter before the body de- 
puted to inflict paternal discipline (i. e., the Consistory), 
of which they are members. As the Church is organized, 
it is best that the elders be chosen, two from the small 
council, four from the council of sixty, and six from the 
council of two hundred (referring to the bodies constitut- 
ing the city government) : they should be men of good 
life and honest, without reproach and beyond suspicion, 
above all God-fearing and endowed with spiritual pru- 
dence. And they should be so chosen that they be distrib- 
uted in each quarter of the city, so that they can have an 
eye on everything." 

The "deacons" are to have care of the poor and 
sick, and to attend to the hospitals. Begging is to 
be prevented by their oversight. The "Ordinances" 
give directions touching baptism, which is to be 
performed in the Church, touching the Lord's Sup- 
per, to be administered once a month in one of the 
Churches, and at Easter, Pentecost, and Christmas, 
and contain regulations about marriages, burials, 
and other concerns of a Christian community. The 



\ 



132 John Calvin: The Statesman. 



Ministers and Ancients are to meet once a week, 
on Thursday, to consider the state of the Church 
and to administer discipline. 

The executive bodies of the Church are two. 
First, there is the Venerable Company, containing 
all the pastors of the Republic of Geneva, a purely 
clerical body, and lacking political authority. It 
was entrusted with the supervision of all matters 
that concerned the Church alone, especially the edu- 
cation, election, and installation of ministers. Yet 
even in this it depended upon the civil authority 
and the congregation for final sanction of its acts. 
In the second place is the Consistory, or Presby- 
tery, composed of clergymen and laymen, a far 
more influential body than the Venerable Company. 
In it State and Church are united. The head of 
this body is the Syndic. The laymen are in the 
majority and elected annually, the ministers being 
a more fixed element though a minority. The real 
ruler of this body was Calvin, presiding only a few 
times as an informal chairman, yet as has been said 
while he was not president, he was the soul of the 
Consistory. 

The two principles to which, to quote Guizot, 1 
Calvin attached the highest importance, "I might 
almost call them his two supreme passions," were 
first, the distinction between religious and civil 
society ; i. e., between two societies, each independ- 
ent in its own domain, but giving each other mutual 



iSt. I,ouis and Calvin, p. 259. 



Ths New Discipline. 133 



support; second, the discipline of all members of 
Church who were subject to ecclesiastical power, 
and in extreme cases handed to the civil power. 
The constitution formed for the Christian Church 
of Geneva was, "to a certain extent, both liberal 
and cautious, and like the civil constitution of the 
Christian Genevan State, it was republican." The 
Consistory has been called a Star Chamber. But 
it was limited to the use of the spiritual sword. 
Civil punishments fell to the Council. To the min- 
isters of Zurich Calvin wrote, November 26, 1553: 
"The Consistory has no civil jurisdiction, but only 
the right to reprove according to the will of God, 
and its severest punishment is excommunication." 
Yet it was not till after the victory over the Liber- 
tines in 1555 that the Council conceded to the Con- 
sistory its claim of right of excommunication. This 
throws light upon the long struggle of Calvin to 
gain for the Church its highest rights of self-gov- 
ernment. 

Summarily, the gains made by Calvin for the 
Church were notable; authority for her ministers; 
their ordination by ministers ; lay representation, 
by elders ; excommunication of persistent offenders ; 
and in the last resort, by a spiritual court alone, the 
Consistory. As the society of Geneva included all 
baptized persons, thus giving to the Church over- 
sight in matters concerning errors in doctrine and 
sins against the peace of the society, it was the 
theory of Calvin that State and Church should 



134 John Calvin: The Statesman. 

be mutually helpful, both in correcting and chas- 
tising offenders. It was not without a severe strug- 
gle with the Little Council that Calvin won his 
victory for the rights of the Consistory. In a 
classic paragraph he drew the line between the 
civil and the ecclesiastical authorities: 

"That all this (i. e., discipline) shall be done in such 
fashion that the ministers shall have no civil jurisdiction 
and shall use none but the spiritual sword of the Word 
of God as Saint Paul directs them; and that the authority 
of the government and of ordinary justice shall in no way 
be diminished by the Consistory, but that civil authority 
shall remain unimpaired. And in particular, where it shall 
be necessary to make some punishment or constrain the 
parties, the ministers with the Consistory, having heard 
the parties and made remonstrances and admonitions as 
shall be fitting, shall report all to the Council, which shall 
deliberate on their report and order and render judgment 
according to the merits of the case." 

In the administration of discipline there was a 
most vigorous impartiality, no sex, rank, person 
being considered. The eyes of the elders were 
everywhere. Every unseemly act was reported. 
The following incidents, taken from the records of 
the Registers, will present both the humor and the 
horror of life under the new regime. Several 
women, among them the wife of the Captain-Gen- 
eral, were sent to jail, for dancing; Bonivard, the 
hero of the dungeon of Chillon, and the friend of 
Calvin, was summoned before the Council for play- 
ing at dice with the poet, Clement Marot, for a 



The: Ne)w Discipline;. 135 



quart of wine ; three men who had laughed during 
the sermon were imprisoned for three days; three 
children, for staying outside the church to eat 
cakes, were punished ; a boy was whipped for call- 
ing his mother a "she-devil;" a girl was beheaded 
for striking her parents. Cruel penalties these ; but 
the Middle Ages had not yet withdrawn their black 
shadows from the city of Geneva, nor yet did the 
enlightenment of the Reformation lift the gloom 
from Europe for more than two centuries after 
the death of Calvin. Witchcraft, blasphemy and 
heresy were as bad as lying, fornication, and mur- 
der, for generations after the days of the great 
reformer. 

There were in the years 1558 and 1559 four 
hundred and fourteen cases recorded upon the 
pages of the Register of the Consistory. It may 
seem very ridiculous to many, and simply the rea- 
son for buffoonery to others, yet again to others a 
hateful fact of civilization, but to the student of 
history, it will be just as well to take them as rep- 
resenting what one has called a "disclosure, in un- 
dress, of human character and actions which the 
lofty philosophic generalities of history have too 
much the power to control or disguise." We must 
deal with them as a fact. Then again, if we are 
inclined to find the masculine character and grand 
aims of Calvin "frittered" by attention to such 
minutiae, we should remember that only in their 
applications may we hope to discover the meaning 



136 John Calvin: The; Statesman. 

of principles. Whenever a refined intellectualism 
withdraws itself into the recesses of art and letters, 
and cultivates a fastidious sense in its contact with 
real life, its "hall mark" of exclusiveness will be 
found to be a mere brand of inability to do the 
world's work. For, as it was in the movement from 
the Renaissance to the Reformation, when Erasmus 
complained of the damage Luther was doing to 
letters, and men of the Renaissance turned with dis- 
gust from' men of the Reformation, the same old 
story is repeated, and criticism wastes itself away 
in its whining challenge to the genius of construc- 
tion which is out in the world intensely concerned 
with human affairs, and in the main, for their 
good. 

That Calvin's system proved a serious check to 
personal liberty goes without saying, and that it 
provoked bitter opposition we know well enough. 
But it changed the face of life in Geneva. If the 
people woke, and ate, and toiled, and went to bed, 
under a sort of cut-and-dried ethics, they yet illus- 
trated what could come of obedience to a noble 
ideal of life, strenuous, intellectual, and pure, 
though imposed by a masterful will, and not always 
welcomed by the populace. A French refugee one 
day exclaimed to a peasant: "How delightful it 
is to see this lovely liberty in your city!" The 
peasant replied : "Lovely liberty ! we were once 
obliged to go to mass; now we are obliged to go 
to sermon." However, the people grew in intel- 
ligence by the use of the Catechisms, and the priv- 



The Nsw Discipline;. 137 



ileges of the schools. Good order and social purity 
followed in the wake of Calvin's severe discipline. 
People submitted who would otherwise have thrown 
off the yoke, had there been a less virile will in 
the chief pastor or a less deliberate purpose in the 
Council to make a model city of Geneva. If Lib- 
erty suffered somewhat, Good Order was en- 
throned. 

It took ten years of constant and vigilant po- 
lice oversight combined with moral and spiritual 
education to secure to Calvin his triumph over the 
intrigues of parties and the hatred of base born 
men. From 1545 to 1555 he felt the utmost venom 
of their opposition. At one time he almost de- 
spaired and, December 14, 1547, wrote to Farel: 
"Affairs are in such a state of confusion that I 
despair of being able longer to retain the Church, 
at least by my own endeavors." His opponents 
were of the same crowd who drove him away in 
1538, and though they afterwards submitted, and 
in the case of one or two, even joined in the invi- 
tation for his return, yet under the fretting of his 
harsh discipline they began serious and offensive 
resistance. They nicknamed him "Cain," and 
named dogs after him; they threatened him in 
the pulpit, and fired guns off under his windows ; 
even trying on one occasion to wrest from his hands 
the sacred elements at the Eucharist. Only an 
extraordinary man could have resisted the pres- 
sure. 



138 John Calvin: Ths Statesman. 



The first victim of the new discipline was 
Jacques Gruet who suffered death for sedition and 
blasphemy. Calvin's account of him as a "scurvy 
fellow" is justified by the facts. He would have 
been obnoxious in any other decent community. 
A libel which he had attached to Calvin's pulpit 
in St. Peter's Church led to his arrest by order 
of the Council. He was condemned for moral, 
religious, and political offenses, and after having 
been inhumanly tortured every day for a month, 
was beheaded on the 26th of July, 1547. The 
fashion of the times in dealing with criminals was 
fiercely harsh. The next to suffer from the iron 
discipline was Ami Perrin, a popular leader of 
the patriotic party. He had been influential in 
recalling Calvin, and for a time had supported the 
reform movement, but what with his vanity, pre- 
tense, and theatric airs he well earned the title 
that fell with biting energy from Calvin's pen: — 
"stage-emperor" who played now "Caesar comi- 
cus" and then "Caesar tragicus." His wife, Fran- 
cesca, was according to Calvin's word a "prodig- 
ious fury." She excelled in revelry and the swing 
of an abusive tongue. As the maxim advises 
against quarreling with a woman, it would be bet- 
ter for the fame of Calvin's wisdom if he had not 
measured tongues with one who is admitted by 
Audin to have been "excitable, choleric, fond of 
pleasure, and enamoured of dancing." She, her 
husband, and her father Favre, were put in prison 



The New Discipline:. 139 



for a few weeks. The father refused to apologize, 
the husband confessed his wrong, but it is not as- 
certained that the "fury" became penitent. Calvin 
told the family that as long as they stayed in Ge- 
neva they must obey the laws though every one 
of them wore a diadem. 

Thenceforward Perrin led in the opposition to 
Calvin. On his return from Paris whither he had 
gone as ambassador, he was indicted for treason, 
having told the French government that French 
troops could be stationed at Geneva to hold off 
Germany, and was expelled from the Council. The 
Libertines 1 were furious and a clash occurred in 
the Senate House, in the midst of which Calvin 
entered, unarmed, and, at the risk of his life, 
calmed the tumult. Even his chief detractor, 
Audin, in his dramatic account of the mob, of the 
"fixed" eye of Calvin, and of his amazing elo- 
quence, says : "The Libertines who had shown 
themselves so bold when it was a question of 
destroying some front of a Catholic edifice, over- 
turning some saint's niche, or throwing down an 
old wooden cross weakened by age, trembled like 
women before this man, who in fact, on this occa- 
sion exhibited something of the Homeric heroism." 2 

For awhile Geneva rested under a truce be- 
tween the contending parties. Indeed Calvin was 
put on the defensive. The Council censured him 

IThe name "Libertine" was a nickname for the party opposed 
to Calvin, yet it was not contemporary with him. 
2 Calvin, Audin, p. 394. 



140 John Calvin: The; Statesman. 

for saying in a letter to Viret that the Genevese 
"under pretense of Christ wanted to rule without 
Christ," and that he had to fight their "hypocrisy." 
The quiet behavior of Perrin gave him an advan- 
tage and he was elected first Syndic, which position 
he held during the trial of Servetus, voting against 
the death sentence. After 1553 the friends of Cal- 
vin gained the supremacy of the Council, and there 
would have been little more trouble save that Per- 
rin and some of his intimates were charged with 
laying a diabolical plot to murder all foreigners on 
a Sunday during Church services. There is no 
likelihood that such a plot could have been proved, 
yet the attending circumstances, a street riot, en- 
abled the Council to bring Perrin to trial and to 
convict him of guilt in the case. Fortunately for 
him, he fled Geneva in time, and though condemned 
to death and his estates confiscated he escaped 
the deadly wrath of the Council. 

Pierre Ameaux was a member of the Two Hun- 
dred; "a man of the bar-room with a wicked 
tongue and a soul destitute of energy." His abuse 
of Calvin at a drinking bout occasioned his arrest, 
and his trial resulted in his conviction, the penalty 
being that he should walk the streets in his shirt, 
carry a lighted torch in his hands, and sue for 
pardon. 

The case which brought Calvin face to face 
with the Council and seriously imperiled his cause 
was that of Berthelier, the debauchee son of a 



The; New Discipline;. 141 



worthy patriot. He was secretary of the Council, 
and yet was excommunicated by the Consistory for 
his offenses. At first the Council accepted the 
decision of the Consistory, but later supported 
Berthelier. Calvin was thus forced to submit to 
the Council, or to run the risk of a second expul- 
sion, or to bring the Council to his way of think- 
ing. On the Sunday following the absolution of 
Berthelier by the Council, he declared at the close 
of the sermon, when about to administer the Sac- 
rament: "I will lay down my life ere these hands 
shall reach forth the sacred things of God to 
those who have been branded as His despisers." * 
Perrin, who had some respect for the character of 
the hour and the man, or, it may be for the reason 
that he feared an outbreak, advised Berthelier to 
absent himself from the Eucharist. The magnifi- 
cent courage of Calvin carried the day, and the 
storm blew to its end in the plot above mentioned 
in which Berthelier and Perrin fled to avoid 
execution. And Libertinism was dead in Geneva. 

Thenceforward Geneva went forward along the 
lines of Calvin's doctrine and discipline, becoming 
more intelligent and moral and law-abiding, clean, 
prosperous, and famous. 

The "Ecclesiastical Ordinances" of the Church 
of Geneva deserve our sympathetic attention, for 
we have before us not the code of a single town 
of small consequence on the confines of Switzer- 
land, but the "one form of Church polity which best 



142 John Calvin : The Statesman. 



expresses the spirit of the Reformation." There 
was a directness in the aim of the Reformers 
throughout Europe that found a congenial soul in 
the Genevan code. The discipline of Geneva fol- 
lowed hard upon every assertion of individual lib- 
erty. Scotland got its reformation, Holland its 
emancipation, England the brief buf brilliant reign 
of Calvin's faith and discipline, and France its 
sixty years of Huguenot struggle against the royal 
authority, direct from the source in Geneva. The 
contrast between the three Frenchmen, contempo- 
raries at Paris before 1535, puts the case in a nut- 
shell ; Rabelais wasted individualism, Loyola 
crushed individualism, Calvin educated individual- 
ism. Calvinism was very sombre, even forbidding 
at times, yet it did not seek its pleasures in the 
license of the tavern, or the chamber of inquisi- 
tion, but in the school room, the home, the church. 
It made itself very ridiculous according to our 
modern way of seeing things, by insisting upon 
observance of trifles, by exiling innocent fun, by 
suppressing the humorist, and by jailing the clown. 
What then? It had a huge task set by the times, 
and the joker was not the man to lead Protestant- 
ism against the terribly repressive energy of the 
Jesuit, of Spain, of the Inquisition. The odds were 
all against Geneva in the impending conflict. Cal- 
vinism was tending to gather to itself all the moral 
worth to be found anywhere in the scattered bits 
Protestantism. Its self-denial and sincerity, its 



The New Discipline;. 



143 



clear-cut statement of problems and their solution, 
its vision and its passion, all got recognition and 
begot victory. The tiny band was not in all re- 
gards polished, or gracious. Its members used 
bold speech to princes and were afraid only of 
God. They were understood. They hurt feelings, 
but they conquered. They may not have been om- 
niscient, but they were invincible. 

In dealing with his little world whose life was 
to spread to Holland, to England, to America, Cal- 
vin did not try to imitate Plato with his "paper- 
republic," but with tremendous practical effort, by 
some mistakes, and by much that was masterful, 
his desires were achieved. He aimed to establish a 
real rather than to paint a virtuous society. And 
what is to the point, he succeeded. He did what 
Catholicism in the Middle Ages had failed to do. 
He did what early Protestantism had likewise 
failed to do. In the first case, the individual had 
been compelled to surrender his understanding to 
the Church, and to bend his conscience and will 
to priest and prince; the revolution of Protestant- 
ism had failed to fully correct the error. For while 
it relieved outward restraint, it yet did not suc- 
ceed in regenerating the forces of action. 

Calvin taught the personal soul its rights, and 
its obligations, as well; he tried by simple and it 
may be admitted, by almost barbarous legislation, 
to incite men to achieve free obedience. This may 
appear strange to assert, yet to one who has any 



144 John Calvin: The Statesman. 

realization of the significance of the epoch of 
which we write, it ought to be credible, as one has 
said: that "Government at Geneva was not police, 
but education; self-government mutually enforced 
by equals on each other." At any rate, the expe- 
riment was heralded throughout Protestant Eu- 
rope, and men flocked to the little city by the blue 
lake to see what power of divination had descended 
upon earth that could so change the face of a 
society and preserve its members from splitting up 
into many sects, for this was the peril of Protestant- 
ism. The rising might of the Inquisition, the swift 
spread of Jesuitism, and the new confidence of 
Rome were sufficient to demand of all who had 
turned to the new faith a scrutinizing search for 
some mightier preservative, some defiant propa- 
gandism before which nothing then or since known 
could make headway. The more effective spread 
of Calvinism as over against that of Lutheranism 
is proof that the larger stream had taken to itself 
the power of the smaller one. Save where national 
issues prevented, Calvinism overbore its elder ally, 
and where the former failed to propagate itself 
Calvinism rose again and again, strong with its 
peculiar strength. It possessed a magical might, 
like all truly great movements in history, more 
unsubduable than its adherents knew themselves. 
It animated the followers of Knox, the cavalry of 
Cromwell, and the exiles in the cabin of the 
Mayflower. 



CHAPTER IX. 



CALVIN AND SERVETUS. 

Since: that fateful morning in October, 1553, 
when Servetus was led from prison to the gates 
of the City Hall to hear the Chief Syndic pronounce 
his sentence, and fell upon his knees crying out: 
"The sword ! in mercy ! and not the fire ! Or I may 
lose my soul in despair," — history has, especially 
of late years, been doing the poor victim the 
justice of fuller discussion and defense than it has 
accorded to any man connected with the Reforma- 
tion. Such is the judgment of one of the calmest 
of Protestant historians. 1 Servetus has not lacked 
able, even enthusiastic apologists. The tragedy 
has been dramatized. Not sympathy, but justice, 
has lifted the martyr into a fairer court of trial 
than he was allowed to enter in Geneva, has taken 
off his chains, and given him a sympathetic hear- 
ing. The approval of Calvin's act by his intimate 
friends in the sixteenth century has been sup- 
planted by the severe condemnation of the act by 
his friends in the twentieth century. 2 



1 Schaff, Swiss Ref., p. 686. 

2 Dr. C. H. Parkhurst. 

io 145 



146 John Calvin: Ths Statesman. 



The year 1553 marked the ebb tide of Calvin's 
influence in Geneva, and this not after but before 
the coming of Servetus. His cause was in hard 
lines. The parties contending for mastery in the 
city were evenly balanced, and it looked at one time 
as if the scales were about to tip against Calvin's 
cause. When the Spaniard appears on the scene 
he runs into a trial which was of more than doc- 
trinal import, and "was to test the relative strength 
of the rival parties in Geneva, and the permanence 
of Calvin's control." 1 Yet the long struggle noted 
above, lasting ten years, did not reach its end until 
it had spotted the fair fame of the chief contest- 
ant, and left the friends of Calvin and of the 
Reformation with a burden of explanation hard to 
carry. 

No two men of the period offer to the reader 
so many points of both likeness and contrast. Both 
men were precocious in their youth, men of posi- 
tive genius, foes of Rome, bold in opposing her 
reliance upon institutionalism, and in attempting 
her reform, both prolific writers, both versatile, 
both confident of a divine call, both dying in the 
prime of life; but the one was constructive, the 
other destructive; the one founder of a system 
still abiding, the other without a congregation to 
carry his name forward ; the one filling the shelves 
of scholars of many languages with his books, the 
other scarcely known in his own books, for they 



1 J. Calvin : W. Walker, p. 334. 



Calvin and Servetus. 147 



rank with the great rarities of literature ; the one a 
star of the first magnitude, the other a passing 
meteor ; the one dying quietly upon his bed, the other 
shrieking "misererecordias" in his native tongue 
amidst the crackling of fagots. It is altogether a 
dark chapter in the career of the great leader of 
the Reformation. Gardens and vineyards now 
cover the little hillock of Champel, south of the 
city, where the funeral pile was prepared in the 
thick of the fallen oak leaves, but not thus can 
history hide the scene. In 1903, on the three hun- 
dred and fiftieth anniversary of the death of Ser- 
vetus, many friends of the victim of intolerance 
set up a monument to the memory of "Michel 
Servet." 

"See how those Christians love one another," 
was the word of outsiders in the first century. 
"There are no wild beasts so ferocious as Chris- 
tians who differ concerning their faith," was the 
exclamation of heathens in the fourth century. The 
brilliant writer on the growth of rationalism in 
Europe 1 has dwelt upon the significance of this 
change in the passing centuries, and has empha- 
sized the fact that as their minds became diverted 
from moral considerations and were filled with a 
sense of the importance of subtle theological dis- 
tinctions, the theologians were willing to shut each 
other out of heaven upon the use or the neglect 
of a vowel point, as in the case of the difference 



1 Iyecky.; 



148 John Calvin: The Statesman. 

between the Homo-ousians and the Homo^-ousians. 
The Fathers were honorably reluctant to shed blood, 
however. When it comes to the Church of the 
Middle Ages its influence is measured by the abil- 
ity of the Clergy to direct civil authority in the 
punishment of heresy. It was not a weak but a 
triumphant Church that suppressed heresy, and not 
in impulse but in deliberation, and not secretly but 
openly, not with painless poison but in the agonies 
of a slow fire. Popes instigated massacres, as in 
the case of the Albigenses, or gave thanks for 
wholesale slaughter, as in the awful night of St. 
Bartholomew. 

Nor was persecution restricted to Catholics, 
and though Protestant oppression of free thought 
was never so sanguinary as that of Catholicism, yet 
even the stoutest of Reformers against Roman in- 
tolerance breathed the air of the times. All the 
leaders of the Reformation upheld the right and 
the duty to suppress heresy, save Zwingli and So- 
cinus. This right was placed in the hands of the 
civil ruler by the Helvetic, Scottish, Belgic and 
Saxon Confessions. Luther, Knox, Beza, Cran- 
mer and Ridley asserted the right. In fact early 
Protestantism flinched as little as did Rome from 
the extreme consequences of intolerance. The ju- 
dicious Hallam observes : "Persecution is the deadly 
original sin of the Reformed Churches, that which 
cools every honest man's zeal for their cause as 
his reading becomes more extensive." 1 

l Const. Hist. 1 ; 2. 



Calvin and S^rvetus. 149 



And yet, because Protestantism was flexible, and 
its very principle of appeal to individual reason 
demanded a degree of toleration, it moved, with 
greater rapidity than Catholicism, toward freedom 
of thought and speech. 

It should be remembered that the age was a 
cruel one, and that men of high character inflicted 
upon their fellows brutal penalties, utterly without 
excuse in a later day, and strangely inconsistent 
in their own day with the gospel they preached. 
The great historian of the Inquisition, Dr. Lea, 
says : "There is no doubt that men of the kindliest 
tempers, the profoundest intelligence, the noblest 
aspirations, the purest zeal for righteousness, pro- 
fessing a religion founded on love and charity, 
were ruthless when heresy was concerned, and were 
ready to trample it out at the cost of any suffering. 
The wheel, the caldron of burning oil, burning 
alive, flaying alive, tearing apart with wild horses, 
were the ordinary expedients by which the crimi- 
nal jurists sought to deter crime by frightful ex- 
amples which would make a profound impression 
on a not over sensitive population." 1 

The time of the trial and death of Servetus was 
one of intense agitation in the city of Geneva. Cal- 
vin was battling with the Little Council while Ser- 
vetus lay in prison, and it was a question whether 
his defiance of that evenly divided body would not 
send him out of the city though it might at the 



1 Inquisition, p. 234. 



150 John Calvin: The Statesman. 



same time send Servetus to the stake. Servetus 
only added fuel to the flames. Calvin had just 
refused the Sacrament to one of his bitterest ene- 
mies, Berthelier, and had set himself with amazing 
courage against the Council. He had gone so far 
as to declare, only a few days before the awful 
scene at Champel, in the pulpit of St. Peter's : "This 
may be my last sermon to you; for they who are 
in power would force me to do what God does not 
permit." In this fact, the opposition to Calvin, may 
be found a reason why the Council ordered a 
harsher form of death for Servetus than the one 
desired by Calvin. It is not meant by this that 
had Servetus dropped into Geneva a year earlier 
or a year later than 1553, he would have escaped 
the death penalty. Thirteen years after he died, 
the Council of Bern put a Valentino Gentile to death 
by the sword for heresy, and not a voice was lifted 
in his behalf. 

Such was the condition of affairs when the 
Spaniard entered Geneva in July, 1553. 

Michael Servetus was born in Villaneuva in 
the old kingdom of Aragon, in 1509 or 151 1, 
though some accounts give his nativity at Tudela. 
There is much uncertainty as to his early life, yet 
it appears that a very early age he entered the 
University of Saragossa, and thence went to Tou- 
louse, as a student of law, the hereditary occupa- 
tion of his family. His most sympathetic bio- 
grapher, R. Willis, thus judges him in his student 



Calvin and Servetus. 



days: "Michael Servetus, as we apprehend him, 
was one of those sensitive natures, which, like the 
stainless plate of the photographer, retains at once 
and reflects every object presented to it." He vi- 
brated between law, theology, and medicine, and 
in all was noted for restlessness under any phase 
of tyranny. He developed heterodox views, 
whether from the point of view of Catholic or of 
Protestant. Zwingli said of him in 1530, "the false 
and wicked doctrine of the troublesome Spaniard 
goes far to do away with the whole of our Chris- 
tian religion." But Servetus, opinionated, and 
highly contemptuous of his opponents, though then 
barely of age, was not to be deterred from putting, 
in 1 53 1 at Strassburg, the final touches to his "De 
Trinitatis Brroribus" The book blew up no small 
talk, even in distant places. In his Table-Talk 
Luther, the year after its publication, refers to a 
"fearfully wicked book — ein greulich bos Buch," 
which had lately come out against the doctrine of 
the Holy Trinity. 

Finding his Swiss friends of unwelcome spirit 
Servetus left Switzerland for Paris, and under the 
name of Villeneuve entered as a student of mathe- 
matics and physics in one of the Colleges. Under 
this name he afterwards practiced medicine for 
twelve years at Vienne. 

While at Paris he encountered Calvin, and chal- 
lenged him to a debate, but forfeited the engage- 
ment and laid himself open to Calvin's reproach: 



152 John Calvin: The Statesman. 

"You fled at the encountre." Willis does not think 
that Calvin at the time of this challenge knew 
that Villenueve was the Servetus whom he later 
on did to the death. His real name and obnoxious 
books did not fully emerge until the period of his 
trial at Geneva, twenty years afterwards. Mean- 
while he spent some time at Lyons as proof-reader 
to Trechsel the printer, and issued a magnificent 
edition of Ptolemy's Geography, a truly remark- 
able work for a man of his age. One year later 
Calvin put forth his great Institutes. In his 
Geography, first edition, he depreciates Palestine 
as ' 'inhospitable, barren, and altogether without 
amenity," and though this was changed in the 
second edition, it was used against him in his trial 
as reflecting upon the land "flowing with milk and 
honey." Servetus became Scientist, Astrologer, 
and got great fame as Physician. In his work on 
the Restitution of Christianity, he described the cir- 
culation of the blood, seventy-five years ahead of 
Harvey's discovery. His basis of the Godhead as 
pantheistic, his disgust with the Trinity as a "three- 
headed Cerberus," his announcement of revelation 
as progressive, his rejection of predestination, and 
his attachment of merit to good works, opened him 
up to the assaults of the orthodox. At present 
only two copies of the original edition are known 
to exist: one in the National Library at Paris, 
the other in the Imperial Library at Vienna. 
Strange and pathetic contrast to the innumerable 



Calvin and Servetus. 



i53 



and endless multiplications of the books of the Re- 
former of Geneva. In 1790 the book rose like a 
phoenix, in the shape of an exact reprint, but even 
this is now rare. 

It was while at Yienne that Servetus began a 
correspondence with Calvin, in which the latter 
gave no evidence of ill temper, until worn out 
with the teasing importunity of Servetus he refused 
to continue the correspondence. They exchanged 
books, and on receiving the copy of his Institutes, 
with margins filled with criticisms, Calvin wrote 
"there is hardly a page that is not denied by his 
vomit." 

Calvin's last letter to Servetus is lost, but his 
severity need not be questioned, for, in a letter to 
Jean Frellon, written at the same time, he inti- 
mates that he had just written to his versatile in- 
quisitor. "Since he has written to me in so proud 
a spirit, I have been led to write to him more 
sharply than is my wont, being minded to take him 
down a little in his presumption. But I could not 
do otherwise, for I assure you there is no lesson he 
needs to learn so much as humility. This must 
come to him through the grace of God, not other- 
wise. But we, too, ought to lend a helping hand." 
What a delicious bit of insight into the magnifi- 
cent self-assurance which possessed the master 
theologian, and would be humorous if it were not 
tied up with so dark a tragedy. 

On the same day Calvin wrote to Farel, Febru- 



154 John Calvin: The Statesman. 

ary 13, 1546: "Servetus lately wrote to me, and 
coupled with his letter a long volume of his de- 
lirious fancies, with the Thrasonic boast, that I 
should see something astonishing and unheard of. 
He offers to come hither, if it be agreeable to me. 
But I am unwilling to pledge my word for his 
safety; for if he does come, and my authority be 
of any avail, I shall not suffer him to depart alive." 
It is not likely that seven years afterwards Calvin 
forgot his threat when his hold on Geneva was 
shaken by the coming of the intruder. 

In the forepart of 1553 a copy of the Restitutio, 
secretly printed at Vienne, reached Calvin. A 
friend of Calvin, one Guillaume Trie, a fugitive 
from Lyons, in correspondence with a cousin at 
Lyons, who had rallied Trie on alleged freedom of 
thought in Geneva, sent to his cousin a few pages 
of the new volume, and said of the author that "he 
ought to be burned alive." Though this appears to 
have been a private expression, it resulted in the 
arrest of Servetus before the Catholic authorities 
at Lyons. Soon more information was furnished 
by Trie, according to some authorities at the in- 
stigation of Calvin, and as others think, without it. 
There can be little doubt that Calvin was knowing, 
if not to the first letter, at least to what followed, 
when Trie sent to the court of trial the marked 
copy of Calvin's Institutes, annotated by Servetus 
himself, and very probably furnished all the docu- 
ments needed by the Court of Trial at Lyons. In 



Calvin and S^rvstus. 155 



the course of the investigation Servetus crossed his 
own path several times, if he did not lie to con- 
fuse his adversaries. Before the sentence of death, 
by slow fire, delivered June 17th, Servetus made 
his escape, on April 7th, by the help of friends, it 
is thought, and crossed the Rhone, and fled to 
Geneva. 

Why go to Geneva? This question has been 
asked but not satisfactorily answered. He did not 
need to go there. He certainly had reason to dis- 
trust the wrath of Calvin, even if not deadly. He 
might have taken another route to Italy, as he was 
bound for Naples. At any rate, he arrived in 
Geneva, alone, July, 1553. Stopping at the "Rose" 
tavern for a few days, he attended Church, August 
13th, and while listening to a sermon of Calvin 
was recognized, and soon after arrested, at the 
instigation of Calvin. Calvin freely admitted that 
he wished him out of the way, as is plain from the 
letter to Farel of August 20th, in which he said: 
"I hope the judgment will be capital in any event, 
but I desire cruelty of punishment withheld." The 
trial was immediately begun. Servetus, according 
to the ordinances of 1543, was denied counsel. He 
was not tortured. The deed of accusation was 
drawn up by Calvin and the liabilities of a false 
accuser were assumed by a refugee in the employ 
of Calvin, Nicholas de la Fontaine, as was cus- 
tomary. The main charges were of a theological 



156 John Calvin: The: Statesman. 

nature, though they embraced also attacks upon 
Calvin. 

Taking advantage of the critical condition of 
the struggle in which Calvin was engaged with the 
adverse elements of the Council, his foes took up 
the side of Servetus, not that they favored his spec- 
ulations, but that the trial offered them an oppor- 
tunity to strike a heavy blow at their hated leader. 
The result of the first phase of the trial was un- 
favorable to the accused. The second act was in- 
troduced by Claude Rigot, state's-attorney, and in 
this the prisoner was charged with immorality and 
tlie attempt to spread dangerous opinions. A well 
known physical infirmity disproved the first charge, 
and to the second Servetus replied that he had 
come to Geneva with no sinister purpose. His 
demand to be released was urged with good rea- 
sons. Meanwhile, the Catholic authorities at 
Vienne sent a demand for the surrender of the 
prisoner. This the Little Council refused to heed, 
but promised to do him full justice. Servetus him- 
self expressed a wish to remain in Geneva, think- 
ing that he might meet a lighter penalty. 

A discussion was proposed by the Council, in 
the hope that Servetus might be cured of the error 
of his ways, and nothing loath, Calvin instituted a 
colloquy in the presence of the judges, two of 
whom, Perrin and Berthelier, were his worst foes. 
This method not being satisfactory, the judges or- 
dered Calvin to submit his statement of the pris- 



Calvin and Servetus. 157 



oner's errors in writing, and Servetus to make 
answer, both of them in Latin. In this battle with 
the pen Servetus injured his cause, for he indulged 
himself in the most objurgatory epithets, even with 
violence, calling Calvin, "Simon Magus," and abus- 
ing him like a madman. "Thou liest, thou liest, 
thou liest, thou liest, thou miserable wretch!" To 
this Calvin made no reply. 

The whole matter was then submitted to Prot- 
estant Switzerland as a jury, September 226., the 
very day on which Servetus animated by a false 
hope, appealed to the Genevan government to 
cause the arrest of Calvin, as himself a false ac- 
cuser, making plea "that the case be settled by 
his or my death or other penalty." But the reply 
of the Swiss Churches was decidedly unfavorable 
to Servetus, for they unanimously recommended 
that he be declared guilty, and the penalty left to 
the discretion of Geneva. 

The times were indeed critical for Calvin. He 
had but just succeeded in preventing Berthelier 
from taking the Communion, for on the 18th of 
September the Council had voted to "hold to the 
Ordinances as before." The answers from the 
Swiss churches greatly strengthened the cause of 
Calvin, and with his opponents beaten, and despite 
the delays urged by Perrin, October 26th, the Coun- 
cil ordered Servetus to be burned alive. The burn- 
ing was not to Calvin's mind, but the court did not 
heed his desire for a milder form of death, and 



158 John Calvin: The: Statesman. 

sentenced Servetus to be burned after the following 
verdict : 

"We condemn thee, Michael Servetus, to be bound, 
and led to the place of Champel, there to be fastened to 
a stake and burned alive, together with thy book, as well 
the one written by thy hand and the printed one, even 
till thy body be reduced to ashes; and thus shalt thou 
finish thy days to furnish an example to others who might 
wish to commit the like." 

Crushed at first by the unexpected sentence 
Servetus rose with simple courage to meet his 
fate, refusing to Farel a recantation of his errors, 
and though he asked the pardon of Calvin for any 
wrong he might have done him, he would not 
yield his opinions. His one request was for a death 
in whose less fierce torments he might be sure not 
to deny his convictions. The story of his execu- 
tion is one of an awful mingling of mistaken jus- 
tice, devotion to truth, and, it must be allowed, 
even of vindictiveness. Towards noon of October 
27th, the procession came to a halt in the Place de 
Champel. Servetus appeared to be completely hum- 
bled, resigned, and submissive to his fate. At the 
funeral pile Farel led the people in prayer. The 
executioner fastens him by iron chains to the stake 
amid the fagots, puts a crown of leaves covered 
with sulphur on his head, and binds his book by 
his side. The sight of the flaming torch extorts 
from him a piercing shriek of "miserere cordias" in 
his native tongue; the spectators fall back with a 



Calvin and Servetus. 159 



shudder; the flames soon reach him, and consume 
him in the forty-fourth year of his fitful life. In 
the last moments he was heard to pray in smoke 
and agony, with a loud voice, "J esus Christ, thou 
Son of the Eternal God, have mercy upon me." 1 
Thus he died for the doctrine of the Trinity which 
he had upheld during many years of life. 

The present age makes no mistake in its sym- 
pathy with Servetus. The sixteenth century is re- 
pulsive to the twentieth century in its unfeeling ver- 
dict of the stake for opinion's sake, and we leave 
the scene with conflicting emotions. 

The growth of Calvin's spirit from the shrink- 
ing to the severe is a fact worth recalling. In 
the earlier editions of his Institutes are passages 
which show that he had convictions that heretics 
should not be punished, at least with harshness. 
He says: "We should strive by all possible means, 
by exhortation, and teaching, by clemency and kind- 
ness, and by our prayers to God, that they may be 
commended to better thoughts, and return to the 
bosom of the Church." This and other passages 
are altered in later editions. What changed the 
man? Possibly his naturally acid temper became 
more bitter with the accumulation of conflicts, and 
the crisis which came in the year 1553 brought him 
to the last level of bitterness against all opposition. 
He had sufficient support from his surrounding 
theologians. Though a few condemned the exceed- 



iSo Dr. Schaff in Swiss Ref. 



160 John Calvin: Ths Statesman. 

ing fierceness of the sentence and its execution, yet 
the great majority of the leading Protestants, like 
Melanchthon, the mildest of all men, declared it a 
just verdict. Even Guizot, writing within the last 
half century, says that "Calvin's cause was the good 
one, that it was the cause of morality, of social 
order, and of civilization. Servetus was the rep- 
resentative of a system false in itself, superficial 
under the pretense of science, and destructive alike 
of moral dignity in the individual, and of moral 
order in human society." This on one side. 

On the other this. At the third centennial of 
the anniversary of the death of Calvin, held at 
Geneva, May 27, 1864, M. le pasteur Coutin, an 
eloquent speaker, said: "Make every allowance for 
the spirit of the age, for the prevailing prejudices 
which not even a man of genius can altogether 
escape; make allowance for all the necessities of 
the time and the pressure of circumstances ; make 
allowance for whatever you choose; but the fact 
still remains that the laws and measures by means 
of which Calvin endeavored to ensure unity of 
conviction in Geneva are a stain upon his memory, 
an element condemned beforehand in all his work, 
upon which time ought to pass a just sentence." 

This is Geneva herself in the third century from 
the scene. A half century later, 1903, the monu- 
ment to Servetus reveals die sympathy of the 
thinking world. 



CHAPTER X. 



CALVIN— THE MAN. 

It is difficult for us who cultivate a smiling 
charity towards opponents to enter into the men- 
tal operations of an intolerant logician of the six- 
teenth century, and for a materialist age like ours 
to measure the motives of a literalist-mystic like 
Calvin. He was great, and he erred. According 
to Guizot his errors were those of his times, his 
greatness of all times. He touched world-problems 
and lives to-day. "The greatest minds in history," 
says John Morley, "are those who in a full career 
and amid the turbid extremities of political action, 
have yet touched closest and at most points the 
wide, everstanding problems of the world, and the 
things in which men's intent never dies." 1 Of this 
far-shining company John Calvin was assuredly 
one. There is therefore nothing about him, his 
appearance, habits, methods of work, views, powers, 
aims, in which we are not interested. 

According to the description of his most in- 
timate friend, Beza, Calvin was of middle stature, 
of feeble health, courteous, kind, grave, and digni- 



1 Cromwell, p. 6. 
II 



161 



162 John Calvin: The: Statesman. 

fied in deportment. His frame was meagre, even 
emaciated, his face was thin, pale, finely chiseled, 
mouth well-formed, he wore a long pointed beard, 
his hair was black, his nose prominent, his fore- 
head lofty, his eyes flaming. His dress was plain 
and neat, his habits were methodical in the ex- 
treme, his abstemiousness at times incredible, his 
frame altogether too slight for his mighty labors. 
Death worked little change in his countenance, for 
Beza remarked that he looked in death almost the 
same as alive in sleep. 

He was after a sort a Stoic, or a modern Hebrew 
Prophet. Duty, integrity, single-eyed devotion to 
his ideal as he saw it dominated his life. Below 
his autograph in the frontispiece of Henry's smaller 
biography are the words "Cor meum velut macta- 
tam Domino in sacriiicium offero." The words 
describe a fitting symbol — a hand offering a bleed- 
ing heart to God. His frail health was a constant 
hindrance to his plans and toil. We find frequent 
mention of his sickness as a reason for postponing 
certain labors. "Completely worn out," he writes. 
"Before I have concluded," — he is about to send 
off a letter in 1547 — "a cough has seized me, and 
hits me so hard upon the shoulder that I can not 
draw a stroke of the pen without acute pain." The 
signature of another letter tells all the story : "John 
Calvin, confined to bed ;" — that all is his grim pur- 
pose to keep in touch with the age for whose bet- 
terment he was so largely responsible, and the 



Calvin — The; Man. 163 



wracked frame whose weakness his mighty will 
bent to high service in the work of the Church. 

Calvin's mode of living was of the simplest. 
"When a man," he says, "is content with scanty 
food and common clothing, and does not require 
from the humblest more frugality than he shows 
and practices himself, shall it be said that such 
an one is too sumptuous and lives in too high a 
style?" His pleasures were few and simple. John 
Knox found him playing bowls on a Sunday after- 
noon. "He himself made no scruple in engaging in 
play with the seigneurs of Geneva ; but that was the 
innocent game of the clef (key), which consists 
in being able to push the keys the nearest possible 
to the edge of the table." 1 His goods and pos- 
sessions amounted to about two hundred dollars. 
He derived no profit from his books, though they 
were dedicated to princes and noblemen. The only 
really valuable bit of fine ware he received was a 
silver goblet, from the Lord of Varennes. 

He loved truth, and he loved men, not possibly 
as the warm-hearted Luther drew his fellows to 
him, yet with no scant devotion to their good. His 
affection for Farel and Viret is seen in his dedi- 
cation to them of his Commentary on Titus : "I do 
not think there have ever been friends who have 
lived together in such fast friendship and concord, 
as we have during our ministry." When Viret lost 
his wife Calvin wrote to him : "Would that I could 



1 Bonnet's fetters, 2, 49. 



164 John Calvin : The: Statesman. 

fly thither, that I might alleviate your sorrow, or 
at least bear a part of it." 

Viret, Farel, Beza, Knox and Melanchthon held 
him in undying affection. Knox was his senior by 
a few years, but declared him the greatest man 
since the days of the apostles; Farel who had 
stopped him on that fateful night from going on 
beyond Geneva, loved him freely to the end, and 
in his old age hastened from Neufchatel to Geneva 
on foot to bid the dying leader farewell ; Beza, the 
most cultured of all the Reformers, knew Calvin 
intimately for sixteen years, and revered him as a 
father ; Melanchthon wished to die on his bosom. 
No one can turn the pages of his voluminous cor- 
respondence, and fail to see that his letters to 
various persons scatter the slanders of Audin to 
the four winds, those misrepresentations which ac- 
cuse Calvin of lacking an unselfish heart, and of 
being made of marble. True, he was endowed with 
a most forceful wrath, which he did not always 
hold in leash and then woe betide the man against 
whom he aimed the shafts of his scorn and wit. 
"Even a dog barks," he would say, "when his mas- 
ter is attacked; how could I be silent when the 
honor of my Master is assailed?" He wrote to his 
friend Bucer that he found it difficult to tame the 
wild beast of his wrath, and humbly asked pardon. 

"An irritable pride is one of the salient traits 
of his character," says Dyer, and adds, "This feel- 
ing particularly betrayed itself where Calvin's lit- 



Calvin — Ths Man. 165 



erary reputation or his authority as a teacher was 
concerned; for these were the instruments of his 
power and influence/' Beza admits Calvin's prone- 
ness to anger, which however is characterized by 
Calvin himself, more correctly, as morosity. As to 
his "surly" disposition Henry deemed that he was 
what Bossuet called him, "un genie triste" He 
finds in him eagerness, indignant zeal for the truth, 
yet in his letters a cheerful, even childlike confi- 
dence and in his manners nothing formal nor re- 
pulsive. Small things excited his impatience. He 
was at times harsh, and possibly to his friends his 
irritableness, based largely upon his physical infirm- 
ities, was at times somewhat trying. The Genevan 
Council happily called his main feature of moral 
worth, "Majesty of Character." It was a contem- 
porary of Calvin, the Italian Guicciardini, who 
warned statesmen against levity. "Light men are 
the very instruments for whatever is bad, danger- 
ous, and hurtful ; flee from them like fire." Calvin 
would have had only the rarest praise from the 
wise Italian, for he took life seriously. His life 
was a link in the long, the divine order of things, 
and everything that in any way interfered with the 
achievement of his ideal was sternly put aside. 

He was of granite mould; Melanchthon often 
desponded; Knox, fiery, energetic, daring, found 
himself disheartened. But no trace of weakness 
can be discovered in Calvin's faith. He must have 
been caught in the worst perplexities, but his con- 



166 John Calvin: The Statesman. 



fidence in God suffered no just impeachment. He 
was ready for any fate, and true to his doctrine 
was his practice. "I am assured, in the first place, 
that God has me in His holy keeping; and, in the 
second place, that if it pleases Him we should 
suffer, I would gladly die for Him." This marked 
the great soul. 

His unselfishness appears in an entry upon the 
Registres of the Council, January 29, 1546; after 
a serious sickness the Seigneury presented him with 
ten crowns. "On his recovery he returns the money 
to the Council, who cause it to be expended in the 
purchase of a cask of wine for him, thus leaving 
him no alternative but to accept it." On another 
occasion he refused an increase of salary except on 
the condition that his poorer brethren were to be 
likewise benefited. 

Calvin's appreciation of the wonders of the nat- 
ural world was lively and definite. In the chapter 
of the Institutes on Creation he is full of admiration 
for the order and beauty of the universe of God. 
"God has wonderfully adorned heaven and earth 
with the utmost possible abundance, variety, and 
beauty, like a large and splendid mansion, most 
exquisitely and copiously furnished, and exhibited 
in man the masterpiece of his works by distin- 
guishing him with such splendid beauty and such 
numerous and great privileges." 

Still those are in the right who claim that his 
realm of joy was that of the moral universe and 



Calvin — The: Man. 167 



not that of the Genevan hills. We find small ref- 
erence to the glories that were the perpetual feast 
of men who in a later day saw with opened eyes 
the splendors of mountain and lake and sky. It 
was not till the close of the eighteenth century that 
the charms of the outer world, the flower, the 
crag, and the cloud, began to refresh the heart of 
literature. Addison had little to say of the mar- 
vels of the Alps in the opening of the eighteenth 
century, nor had John Milton a hundred years be- 
fore Wordsworth, lifted his hard and battling age 
into loving appreciation of the beauties of nature. 
It is indeed strange that the exceeding charm of the 
city and its surroundings in which Calvin spent 
nearly half his life should not have evoked a warmer 
word than we can find anywhere in his writings. 
The city of Geneva has a noble outlook. It pos- 
sesses cathedral, the bridge spanning the Rhone, a 
"blue-green floor," and near by the hills of the Jura, 
and in the further distance Mont Blanc, all detailed 
in the crystal air as if with the fidelity of a mi- 
croscope. On a clear day the lake is ruffled into 
almost impossible colors. One appreciates Mr. 
Howell's description of Geneva as "an admirable 
illustration printed in colors, for a holiday number, 
to imitate a water-color sketch." The marvel of 
it all is Mount Blanc when uncovered, whether in 
rosy splendor or in its white ghastliness. It is barely 
possible that Calvin had this vision in mind when 
he wrote to his friend, M. de Falaise, February 25, 



\ 



168 John Calvin: Th£ Statesman. 

1547, with regard to a house he was engaging for 
him : "You will have in front a small garden, and a 
noticeably spacious court. Behind there is another 
garden. A great saloon, with as beautiful view 
as you could well desire for the Summer." 

Art, save in the forms of poetry and music, to 
save literature for later discussion, did not demand 
the attention of Calvin. He insisted upon congre- 
gational singing, and wrote a few versions of 
Psalms, and a hymn of praise to Christ in which 
a real fervor and tenderness run through the lines, 
a sample of which is appended : 

"I greet Thee, who my sure Redeemer art, 
My only trust, and Saviour of my heart! 
Who so much toil and woe 
And pain didst undergo, 
For my poor worthless sake; 
We pray Thee, from our hearts, 
All idle griefs and smarts 
And foolish cares to take. 

Thou art the true and perfect gentleness 
No harshness hast Thou, and no bitterness : 
Make us to taste and prove, 
Make us adore and love, 
The sweet grace found in Thee; 
With longing to abide 
Ever at Thy dear side. 
In Thy sweet unity. 

Poor, banished exiles, wretched sons of Eve, 
Full of all sorrows, unto Thee we grieve; 

To Thee we bring our sighs, 

Our groanings and our cries; 



Calvin — The Man. 



169 



Thy pity, Lord, we crave; 

We take the sinner's place, 

And pray Thee, of Thy grace, 
To pardon and to save." 

If in any field of art we look for pre-eminence 
in the case of Calvin, it must be in that of litera- 
ture. Here he leads the throng of writers of his 
day, in two languages, Latin and French. "With 
him," says Van Laun, "French prose may be said 
to have attained its manhood; the best of all his 
contemporaries, and of those who had preceded 
him, did but use as a staff or as a toy that which 
he employed as a burning sword." 1 

He holds rank with the great satirists of the 
world. Though to Rabelais he was "the demoniac 
of Geneva," he made the power of his keen blade 
felt wherever it fell. "Satire without a smile is 
perhaps the nearest approach to outward feeling 
which we find recorded, of the hypochondriac re- 
former of Geneva." 2 His wit was not so coarse 
as that of Rabelais, nor so gentle as that of Mon- 
taigne, but it was none the less dreaded by his 
opponents. When the need arises it leaps out in 
his famous letters. He was one of the great letter 
writers of the world. When too poor to purchase 
books, he wrote; in exile he wrote; when sick he 
wrote. So inevitable was it that he should tie his 
age, and for that matter, succeeding ages to him- 
self. His voluminous correspondence included il- 



1 French literature, i. 



2 Op. cit. 



170 John Calvin: The; Statesman. 

lustrious names. To give but a handful, we find 
in the list the following: Francis I, Henry II, 
Edward VI of England, Anthony of Navarre, Mar- 
guerite of Valois, the Duchess of Ferrara, Coligny, 
Luther, Knox, Cranmer, Melanchthon, Conde, and 
many others. He wrote to plain and needy people 
with frank and tender solicitude, and to the poten- 
tates of earth with candor and dignity. To the 
young King of England he sent the following mes- 
sage: 

"It is a great thing to be a king, and especially of 
such a country ; and yet I doubt not that you regard it 
as above all comparison greater to be a Christian. It is 
indeed, an inestimable privilege that God has granted to 
you sire, that you should be a Christian king, and that 
you should serve Him as His lieutenant to uphold the 
kingdom of Jesus Christ in England." 

The year of his death he writes, January 8, 
1564, to the Duchess of Ferrara: 

"Madame, I pass to another subject. I have long 
had a great wish to make you a present of a gold piece. * 
Think how bold I am; but because I supposed you had a 
similar one, I have not ventured hitherto, for it is only 
its rarity that can give it any value in your esteem. 
Finally I have delivered it to the bearer to show to you, 
and if it is a novelty to you, will you be pleased to keep 
it? It is the finest present that I have in my power to 
make you." 

This was a gold medal which her father, King 
Eouis XII had caused to be struck at the time of 
his dispute with the Pope, Julius II, with this 



Calvin — The Man. 



171 



exergue: "Perdam Babylonis Nomen!" — I will de- 
stroy the name of Babylon. * The gift was very 
agreeable to the daughter of the King, for it was a 
fitting reminder of her own stiff resistance to the 
claims of the Papacy. 

It was as a Commentator that he reigned su- 
preme in his day, and, for that matter survives 
to-day. Beginning with his work on Romans while 
in Strassburg, in 1540, he continued until the year 
of his death in Geneva, with his work on Joshua. 
A more extensive series, and one more clear and 
marked with spiritual insight, and more modern 
in method, was not produced by the age of the 
Reformation. Next to the Institutes and to the 
work of the Academy, Calvin's Commentaries rank 
for influence in the spread of his ideas throughout 
Europe and America. 

While it is scarcely in place in so brief a volume 
and one bent to state the more permanent features 
of Calvin's life work, to elaborate his theological 
position, somewhat is demanded in that line. Cal- 
vin's great emphasis was upon the sovereignty of 
God — the holy, just, and wise ruler of the universe. 
His belief in the supreme authority of the- Bible ; 
his conviction that man — made in the image of 
God — fell into deep depravity, totally unable to 
help himself; and that from this hopeless state, 
some men are freely rescued by God's undeserved 
mercy; the means of which deliverance is Jesus 
Christ, whose indwelling becomes man's personal 



172 John Calvin: The Statesman. 



possession, and in consequence man becomes holy 
unto God and elect unto God, while others are 
plunged into hell independent of any demerit, the 
sole cause of salvation or of loss being the divine 
choice: this over-emphasis of the Divine side is a 
back number in theology to-day. His system of 
theology has suffered much wear; and "the larger 
part of the Protestant world, even in the Churches 
which most honor his memory, has turned far 
aside from it." 1 His view of total depravity has 
gone the way with his peculiar estimate of the 
Holy Scriptures as written by "amanuenses" of 
the Holy Ghost. His theory of the penal satisfac- 
tion of the Atonement has been widely abandoned. 
His valuation of discipline has been wholly re- 
jected. Yet his profound emphasis upon Christian 
intelligence, his primary appeal to mind, above all 
his high premium upon character, his exaltation of 
the personal nature of salvation, these abide. 

The two chief errors which Guizot lays to the 
charge of Calvin, are his belief in the infallibility 
of the verbal statements of the Bible, and his doc- 
trine of predestination. It was around the second 
of these that most of the controversy was had 
between the Reformer and his enemies and some of 
his friends. Calvin's own words well state the 
doctrine of the two destinies : 

"Predestination, by which God adopts some to the 
hope of life, and adjudges others to eternal death, no 



1 Walker. John Calvin, p. 425. 



Calvin — The Man. 173 



one desirous of the credit of piety, dares absolutely to 
deny. . . . Predestination we call the eternal decree of 
God, by which he has determined in Himself, what he 
would have to become of every individual of mankind. 
For they are not all created with a similar destiny; but 
eternal life is fore-ordained for some, and eternal damna- 
tion for others. Every man, therefore, being created for 
one or the other of these ends, we say, he is predestinated 
either to life or death. This God has not only testified 
in particular persons, but has given us a specimen of it 
in the whole posterity of Abraham, which should evi- 
dently show the future condition of every nation to depend 
upon His decision." 1 

Yet Calvin did not go beyond Luther in his 
assertion of the unfree will of man. While Luther 
swept away many mediaeval doctrines, he did not 
hesitate to make God responsible for the ill as well 
as for the good in the world. Strange, both in the 
case of Luther and of Calvin, that a fervent belief 
in the impotence of the will and the exercise of its 
fullest mastery should have characterized the two 
most masterful men of the age. The paradox has 
been well stated by Mark Pattison: "In the sup- 
pression of the liberties of Geneva was sown the 
seed of the liberties of Europe. ... By the de- 
moralizing touch of fatalism was evoked a moral 
energy which had not been felt since the era of 
persecution." 2 

The linked perspective of Calvin's theology 
brushed aside, not only sentiment, but also 



1 Bk. 3, ch. 2i, No. I. 2 Essays, 2-7. 



174 John Calvin: The Statesman. 

sympathy, for his stern logic did not hesitate to 
impute to God the will to separate infants into 
two classes, and this appears in the Westminster 
Confession which teaches that "elect infants dying 
in infancy," and "all other elect persons, who are 
incapable of being outwardly called by the min- 
istry of the Word, are saved by Christ through the 
Spirit, who worketh when, and where, and how He 
pleaseth." In a note accompanying his discussion 
of the Creeds of the Church, Dr. ScharT adds: 
"Elect infants, however, implies, in the strict Cal- 
vinistic system, 'reprobate' infants who are lost. 
This negative feature has died out." 1 

How a belief so oppugnant to the gentler mind 
of the present century could have held sway so 
long has puzzled thousands, yet the solution of the 
difficulty is not so far to seek. In the long per- 
spective of the Church's advance to power the 
doctrine of exclusive salvation had a mighty effect. 
The early Church Fathers did not shrink from de- 
claring that persons external to the Church were 
under a sentence of condemnation. The Church 
according to a favorite image of the Fathers, was a 
solitary ark floating upon a shoreless sea of ruin. 
If they were not unanimous on the subject, and we 
must except Justin Martyr and Clemens Alexan- 
drinus, of whom the first said that Socrates was in 
the sight of God a Christian, yet the great majority 
took the narrower view. Pagans, Jews and schis- 
matics were doomed to eternal fires. 



ip. 97. 



Calvin — The; Man. 175 



This doctrine, not without its sustaining might 
in the days when the infant Church needed to for- 
tify itself against awful persecutions, reached its 
climax of influence in the days when the spiritual 
authority waged war against the diversities of pri- 
vate judgment, put a moral yoke upon ferocious 
tyrants, and went far to abolish slavery in Europe. 
The doctrine of exclusive salvation was tenaciously 
supported by practically all the Reformers. It en- 
abled them to make "the anarchy of transition" less 
perilous. It enabled those who broke away from 
the Romish Church to defy it. Luther and Calvin 
agree with Aquinas in this. Calvin says : "Beyond 
the bosom of the Church no remission of sins is 
to be hoped for, nor any salvation." With this the 
various Confessions, from 155 1, when the Saxon 
Confession was presented to the Synod of Trent, 
to the "Humble Advice concerning a Confession 
of Faith" of the Presbyterian divines assembled at 
Westminster, 1647, stand fast. Zwingli alone 
openly repudiated the doctrine, on reading whose 
statement of the fact Luther said he had no hopes 
of the salvation of Zwingli. 

Few men have proved victor in immediate de- 
bate as often as Calvin did. Few have projected 
themselves so far into the days ahead. Three illus- 
trious citizens of Geneva have forever bound their 
names to the city by the lake. Rousseau was born 
there in 171 2. Madame de Stael lifted the neigh- 
boring Coppet to the notice of the world. Calvin's 



176 John Calvin: Ths Statesman. 

place in the city we know. These three stand for 
the three centuries. The cry of Calvin is, ''Return 
to the Bible !" That of Rousseau, "Return to Na- 
ture !" That of Madame de Stael, "Return to the 
New Humanity !" But the voice of Calvin is still 
the mightiest, in that his errors were those of his 
day, while the truth he fought for is for all time. 
Irony may feast on his treatment of Gruet, one of 
the first victims of the new regime, who adopted 
the Bernese fashion of wearing breeches with 
slashes and plaits at the knees, and pinned a warn- 
ing to Calvin's pulpit, calling him a "gross hypo- 
crite," who was tortured and beheaded; or to his 
contention with Ami Perrin, military chief of the 
republic, whom Calvin nicknamed the "stage em- 
peror," and banished, and with him his gay and 
sharp-tongued wife ; or to his victory over Ameaux, 
who, for declaring Calvin a heretic and nothing but 
a Picard, was paraded through the streets of 
Geneva in his shirt, head bare, and a torch in his 
hand, and ended on his knees for pardon. Yet over 
against this one should picture the man of iron 
who once quelled a popular fury by walking un- 
armed into the crowd and calling to the people 
to begin with him if they must shed blood. He 
surely was a real man. He was candid. He was 
sure of himself. He was wonderfully gifted, a 
prodigious toiler, a man, too, with a mighty con- 
viction of duty, intense, hard towards his enemies, 
faithful to his friends, never saving himself when 
the kingdom of God was in any peril. 



Calvin — The Man. 



177 



The complete triumph of Calvin in Geneva was 
reached by the year 1555. The Perrinists were 
defeated; his majority in the Council was assured; 
the increasing influence of French refugees of high 
social position was more and more felt in the pub- 
lic life of the city; the new generation began to 
give him full honor, and when a simple-minded 
refugee spoke of him as "Brother Calvin," he was 
quickly told that the only proper term in Geneva 
was "Master Calvin." All this, too, though he 
was simply a pastor and teacher, without any offi- 
cial title. His plain living was unchanged, though 
his house was the center of attraction to distin- 
guished visitors from foreign lands. His ability 
to work as if he were endowed with a giant's frame 
ceased not till near the close of his life. A vast 
acquaintance and a few intimates marked his social 
life. So he drew on to the close of an honored 
career. Struggle, rebuff, and neglect gave way 
to a recognition which was open and a reverence 
which was real. 

The crown of his work was reached in the 
establishment of the academy. Though his work 
in Geneva was primarily religious, yet his appre- 
ciation of industrial and educational agencies was 
pronounced, and reveals the statesmanlike quality 
of his mind. He urged the Little Council to de- 
velop the weaving industry, and showed for his day 
liberal views upon the question of trade. 

Above all he was concerned that Geneva should 
12 



178 John Calvin: Th£ Statesman. 

become an intellectual people. He had utmost con- 
fidence in the place of trained brains. By 1556 
he was free enough from his strife with opposition 
to push his plans for the founding of a great school, 
and make the "College" a permanent institution. 
The buildings which have largely remained till 
now were begun in 1558, and a current of gifts 
was started which in a few more years swelled 
to capital proportions. Noble assistants came to his 
aid, among them the Greek scholar of Lausanne, 
Theodore Beza, who succeeded him as chief pastor 
of Geneva, and head of the Swiss Protestants. The 
success of the Academy was great, both in the im- 
mediate and the far future. It was a final step 
towards the realization of Calvin's ideal of a Chris- 
tian commonwealth. Its molding power not only 
in Geneva, but throughout Europe, defies the closest 
search. Next to the Institutes the Academy sur- 
passed all other forces in the spread and the per- 
petuation of Calvin's noblest thought and plan for 
the Reformed Churches. 

For twenty-three years Calvin labored in Ge- 
neva, and then passed on to others the system of 
his making. He died in the height of his mental 
powers, May 27, 1564, the same year with Michel- 
angelo, and, too, the same year in which both 
Shakespeare and Galileo were born. The reform- 
er's urgent spirit refused to yield to his multiply- 
ing maladies, aches of head and joints, gravel, dys- 
pepsia, fever, and asthma. When unable to walk 



Calvin — The Man. 179 



he was carried to church in a chair. He preached 
his last sermon on the 6th of February, 1564. On 
the 25th of April he made his last will. In it are 
heard all the notes of his great character, his genu- 
ine humility, his complete reliance upon the grace 
of God, his declaration of a most sincere purpose 
in all his battles for the truth, to which he had con- 
secrated his genius, his passion for the cause of the 
Reformed Church, and not a word of bitterness 
against his enemies, or even mention of them, save 
in this sentence: "I also testify and declare that, 
in all the contentions and disputations in which I 
have been engaged with the enemies of the gospel, 
I have used no impostures, no wicked and sophis- 
tical devices, but have acted candidly and sincerely 
in defending the truth." He leaves his little prop- 
erty to be disposed of by his brother, Antoine Cal- 
vin, after the payment of all debts. On the 26th 
of April the senators came in a body to see him, 
and were addressed by the patriarch, thanking 
them for their support, and begging their pardon 
for his displays of anger, and leaving them his ex- 
hortations to preserve the doctrine and discipline 
to which he had given his life. On the 28th he 
received the ministers of Geneva, and took each 
one by the hand in final and affectionate farewell. 
On the 19th of May he invited the ministers to his 
house for a simple repast, had himself borne into 
the adjoining room, where he tasted a little food 
in company with them, and was then carried back 



180 John Calvin: The Statesman. 

to the bed which he never left until the day of his 
death. In the grip of excruciating pains he spent 
his last days in frequent quotations of the comfort- 
ing words of the Bible. He was heard to use often 
the ninth verse of the thirty-ninth Psalm: "Thou 
bruisest me, O Lord, but it is enough for me that 
it is Thy hand." About eight o'clock on Saturday, 
the 27th of May, he fell peacefully asleep, conscious 
to the last breath, says Beza. According to his 
expressed wish he was buried without pomp in the 
Plain Palais Cemetery, during the afternoon of 
Sunday, the 28th. 

The minute accounts of his last days, given by 
Beza and other intimate friends, are an utter refutal 
of the hideous stories told by Bolsec fifteen years 
after Calvin died, and retailed by Audin and, 
strange to say, even by Dr. M. J. Spalding, Roman 
Catholic Archbishop, who does not hesitate to ve- 
neer the vilest slanders against the Reformer's good 
name with such a statement as this : "The early Cal- 
vinists were hypocrites, and their boasted austerity 
was little better than a sham, if it was not even 
a cloak to cover enormous wickedness." This is 
worse than libel ; it is caricature. It is too ridicu- 
lous to be offensive. 

When Pope Pius IV heard of the death of Cal- 
vin, he said: "The strength of that heretic con- 
sisted in this, that money never had the slightest 
charm for him. If I had such servants, my domin- 
ions would extend from sea to sea." 



Calvin— The Man. 



181 



The stranger asks for the spot where Calvin 
was buried. A plain stone with the letters "J. C." 
is pointed out, no one knows by what authority. 
The old man who showed the stone to Dr. Tulloch 
seemed to have little other idea of Calvin's work 
than that of the man who limited the number of 
dishes at dinner, — the memory of the sumptuary 
laws of the great autocrat of Geneva being thus 
preserved by a popular tradition in which the ludi- 
crous and the melancholy are oddly mixed. Speak- 
ing of Calvin's grave, Henry says : ''Respecting his 
last will, the Genevese neither raised a monument 
to his memory nor marked his grave with a stone. 
There in the church-yard, which is so decorated 
with the tombs of others, the grave of Calvin is 
unmarked and unknown." 

In this he shared the lot of Moses. 



CHAPTER XL 



STATESMANSHIP. 

In his thorough grasp of the religious situation 
of Europe Calvin surpassed all men of his day, 
and Geneva was simply the fulcrum which he used 
to lift upon a firm basis the work of the Reformed 
Churches. He had many advantages denied to 
other reformers; he was the most widely traveled, 
the most remarkable correspondent, and for years 
before his death the most renowned and influential 
religious leader of his day. A holy contagion 
spread from Geneva, and its type of self-governing 
and strictly disciplined Church was firmly planted 
where governments were hostile, as well as in lands 
that gave his system hearty welcome. France, the 
Netherlands, England, Scotland, Poland, Hungary, 
Germany, and to the far West, America, have traced 
back to the tiny city by the lake the sources of their 
peculiar types of Protestantism, not excluding ad- 
ditions which later history has developed in some 
of them. 

Geneva became a veritable asylum to Calvin's 
own countrymen, and as they came with scars of 
their torture, and emerged from the passes of the 
182 



Statesmanship. 



183 



Jura, and caught sight of the city in which Calvin 
ruled, they fell upon their knees and gave thanks 
to God. They made good their stay, and joined 
with those who had preceded them in strenuous 
efforts to promote the cause of Protestantism. Ge- 
neva contained thirty printing-presses, and sent 
forth an endless supply of material for the expan- 
sion of the truth. Calvin was consulted at every 
stage of the progress of the French Reformation, 
and was called as pastor of the first Protestant 
Church in Paris, but declined. He gave the Hugue- 
nots their creed and polity, sent messengers with 
letters to comfort sufferers and prisoners who had 
renounced their old-time faith, and as one of his 
biographers records his interest: "As the eye of 
a father watches over his children, Calvin watched 
with untiring care of love over all these relations 
in their manifold ramifications, and sought to be 
the same to the great communhy of his brethren in 
France what he was to the little Republic at home." 1 
His course at the time of the Amboise conspiracy 
reflects honor upon his name, for contrary to the 
charge of Bossuet Calvin was opposed to the plot 
of the few against the power of the Guises, and 
warned them against its execution and predicted 
its failure. In the awful persecutions which fell 
upon the devoted Church of his planting, his spirit 
animated every congregation and brightened the 
path of every victim through his darkest hours. 



iStahelin, 1, 507. 



184 John Calvin: The; Statesman. 

The phases of French Protestantism were three ; 
first, an amorphous period ; second, one of more or 
less sturdy expansion ; third, one of active inter- 
est in the political concerns of the State. It began 
with emphasis upon two principles ; that of free 
inquiry, and that of individualism. But these did 
not furnish the cohesive power so soon to be de- 
manded in resisting the foes sworn to the extirpa- 
tion of all heretics. The second phase began with 
the issue of Calvin's Institutes. And though the 
new cohesive power was gained at the expense of 
a weakening of the earlier principles, nothing short 
of the splendid order introduced by Calvin into his 
system of thought and government could be ex- 
pected to offset the equally great system just then 
rising above the horizon in the work of the Jesuits. 

By the year 1547 the Reformation had leavened 
seventeen provinces and thirty-three of the prin- 
cipal towns of France. The model was that of the 
Church of Strassburg, founded by Calvin in 1536. 
In eleven years/from 1555 to 1566, no less than one 
hundred and twenty pastors were sent to France 
from Geneva. The French Reformers had held 
their meetings for worship and consultation at such 
times and places as the exigencies of the moment 
allowed. But on the 25th of May, 1559, a general 
synod of all Protestant congregations in France 
was deliberately convened in Paris. The ecclesi- 
astical system adopted at this synod was dictated 
by Calvin. In it one may see the mind of the ec- 



Statesmanship. 



185 



clesiastical statesman. The Confession of Faith 
which makes up the preface is an epitome of Cal- 
vin's Institutes. The criterion of truth was the re- 
vealed Word of God. Following this comes the 
organization of the local Church, in which it was 
ordered that the members of each body of the 
faithful should elect a consistory (a body of ruling 
elders), for calling a minister and celebrating the 
sacraments. A certain number of such Churches 
was to form a conference organized upon the basis 
of representatives, elders, and ministers. The King- 
dom of France was divided into provinces (sixteen 
being the usual number), with a provincial synod 
to be held annually in each section, composed of 
all the ministers in the precincts and of one elder 
from each local Church. Crowning this was a 
national synod, to meet once in each year, com- 
posed of two ministers and two elders to represent 
each of the provincial synods. Such was the Na- 
tional Church of France. One has only to substi- 
tute for these titles the words presbyteries, kirk 
sessions, and general assembly, and the National 
Church of Scotland is before him in prototype. 

The scenes of trial through which the spiritual 
children of Calvin walked with the tread of heroes 
bear bright witness to the power of an invisible 
hand upon a distant crisis. History stands with 
uncovered head in the presence of men and women 
who need no other monument of their faith than 
the story of how they faced the destruction of home 



186 John Calvin: The: Statesman. 



and the death of their dear ones. In the old Bastile 
a venerable man is standing in chains before Henry 
III. The king exclaims: "Recant, or I shall be 
compelled to give you up to your enemies ; these 
two girls here are to be burned to-morrow." 

"Sir," said Palissy the potter, "listen to me, 
and I will teach you the way to talk like a king: 
/ can not be compelled to do wrong" 

Another scene is witnessed on the balcony of 
Coligny. The wife of the noble, Charlotte de La- 
val, is sitting by his side ; "Husband, why do you 
not openly avow your faith, as your brother Andelot 
has done?" 

"Sound your own soul," he replied; "are you 
willing to be chased into exile with your children, 
and to see your husband hunted to the death? I 
will give you three weeks to consider, and then I 
will take your advice." She looked her husband 
steadily in the eye through her tears. "Husband, 
the three weeks are ended ; do your duty, and leave 
us to God." So Coligny becomes a file leader in 
French history. 

In the flight of every forlorn Huguenot, brav- 
ing risks and hardships incredible to the bigoted 
libertine who idled life away with the courtesans 
of Versailles, one might read the overthrow of the 
faith of Calvin, but in another interpretation of the 
devotion of the runaways one might discover a 
parallel to the emigration of Abraham, "who went 
out, not knowing whither he went." 



Statesmanship. 



187 



The "Church of the Desert," as that of the 
Huguenots was styled, with its motto — The Burn- 
ing Bush — though widely scattered, had the power 
to unify and to organize its members on every soil 
it touched. In Germany, where Calvin had labored 
for three years, the Reformed Church developed 
into a strong branch of Universal Protestantism. 
There it expressed itself in the Heidelberg Cate- 
chism, "the most widely accepted symbol of the 
Calvinistic faith." In Hungary it gained a firm 
foothold, and to-day two-thirds of the Evangelical 
population, about one-seventh of the inhabitants, 
are in Churches Calvinistic in origin and polity. 1 
In Holland none of the hellish devices of their ene- 
mies availed to daunt the courage or even to seri- 
ously check the progress of the Dutch Protestants. 
It was there, as has been remarked by Dr. Schaff, 
that we must look to find the practical and eccles- 
istical part of Calvin's total contribution of more 
value than his theological. This will explain why 
the Dutch Reformed Church, after having first 
expelled Arminianism, which was "the necessary 
and wholesome reaction against scholastic Calvin- 
ism," was allowed to return to Holland after the 
death of Maurice, and gradually pervaded the na- 
tional Church. It was not so much the doctrine 
of predestination, as the organizing skill of Calvin, 
that kept Hollander and Scot true to his vow, and 
expert in saving the Church from disintegration. 



1 Walker's Calvin, p. 395. 



188 John Calvin: Tut Statesman. 

The fact to which attention has been called in 
an earlier chapter falls into line. In his "Intel- 
lectual Development of Europe" Dr. Draper re- 
marks : "A reason for the sudden loss of expansive 
force in the Reformation is found in its own in- 
trinsic nature. The principle of decomposition 
which it represented, and with which it was inex- 
tricably entangled, necessarily implied oppug- 
nancy." Doubtless this did breed dissensions among 
the Protestants, and they became an army divided 
against itself, in peril of surrendering to a watch- 
ful and united foe. It is true, too, that Protestant- 
ism, unlike its formidable antagonist, contained "no 
fundamental principle that could combine distant 
communities and foreign countries together ; it orig- 
inated in dissent, and was embodied by separation. 
It could not possess a concentrated power, nor rec- 
ognize one apostolic man who might compress its 
disputes, harmonize its powers, and wield it as a 
mass." This observation is in the main true, 
but it fails to do justice to the one man who 
succeeded in typing completely the aggressive 
power of Protestantism, and worthy of its honors, 
John Calvin. The Reformation, which was begun 
as criticism, did not end in destruction. It devel- 
oped the spirit of free inquiry among peoples who 
were working out the problems of constitutional 
government, and became constructive of agencies 
which were wise, practical, and successful in the 
founding of mighty nations. 



Statesmanship. 



Yet it is to Scotland that one must go for fullest 
proof of the amazing and immediate might of the 
new faith. Calvin's influence upon this part of the 
English-speaking world was unique. Discipline, pol- 
ity, and doctrine were stamped with his genius. 
Through the direct agency of another Calvin gained 
Scotland for the Reformation, for what he was to 
Geneva, and Luther to Germany, John Knox was 
to the land of his birth. The five years of his exile 
(1554-1559), spent mostly in Geneva, made him 
thoroughly familiar with the "most perfect school 
of Christ that ever was since the days of the 
Apostles," as he said. 

Knox even outdid Calvin in his fiery energy for 
the redemption of his people. His labors are too 
well told in another volume of this series to call 
for elaboration here. But one scene in his daugh- 
ter's life reveals the temper of soul before which 
all opposition was as chaff. Mrs. Welch was seek- 
ing before the King of England, James I, the re- 
turn of her banished husband. The King told her 
he would grant it if she would persuade her hus- 
band to submit to the bishops. "Please, your 
Majesty," said the heroic woman, lifting up her 
apron and extending it towards the King as if in 
the act of receiving her husband's severed head 
from the ax, "I 'd rather kep his head there !" 

The Kirk in Scotland got into history in mem- 
orable fashion. The people were for the most part 
poor, and when they became a power in the State 



igo John Calvin: The: Statesman. 

they did not lean to costly shows, ceremonies, ritual, 
and processions. Government by the majority was 
in order. Lecky says, "The Kirk was essentially 
republican." Says Froude: "The Scottish Com- 
mons are the sons of their religion; they are so 
because that religion taught them equality of man." 
The preacher was called to his work by the elec- 
tion of the congregation, not by the appointment 
of king or bishop. 

It has been reserved for a Frenchman, and that 
too not of the faith of Calvin, to lift praise to its 
highest height. Taine says of the Calvinists : "They 
founded England in spite of the corruption of the 
Stuarts; . . . they founded Scotland; they 
founded the United States ; at this day they are 
by their descendants founding Australia and colon- 
izing the world." 1 As this volume is not so much 
a eulogy as an analysis, it will be well to inquire 
further into this. 

Bancroft is correct in saying that "the right 
exercised by each congregation of electing its own 
ministers was in itself a moral revolution." 2 This 
certainly did not fit in with the older plan of rule 
in England, and King James I was true to his habit 
of thought when he declared, "Presbytery agreeth 
as well with monarchy as God and the devil." 
Whatever came later in the age on the favorable 
soil of America, it is certain that the long struggle 
between the Stuarts and the Nonconformists in the 



l Eng. I,it. 2-472. 



2 1, 42. 



Statesmanship. 



191 



' seventeenth century failed to turn England over to 
the Geneva school of statesmen, though theologic- 
ally the latter made good in the famous Westmin- 
ster Confession. 

Imperfect beginnings were made by Luther, 
Zwingli, and Calvin. They looked for complete- 
ness of their partial work in another age. 1 In 
1526, Francis Lambert, of Avignon, proposed for 
the Churches of Hesse a scheme of ecclesiastical 
order which never went into operation there. It 
"contemplates the formation of a pure congrega- 
tion of true believers, in which the right of ecclesi- 
astical self-government should be exercised imme- 
diately by the congregation, not mediately through 
representatives and delegates." Another part of 
the platform made provision for a yearly synod of 
the Churches to be "composed of the assembled 
pastors and of delegates chosen immediately before 
in the Church meetings." However, the plan did 
not prevail. Neither Luther nor Melanchthon 
thought the time ripe for the introduction of a 
simple evangelical Church polity. 

The scheme of Calvin expressed itself in both 
the Congregational and the Presbyterian Churches ; 
in the former through the Brownist or Independent 
movement, in England, Holland, and New Eng- 
land; in the latter in Scotland, England, and other 
than the New England Colonies of the Western 
World. The doctrine of Calvin filled the pulpits 



iGieseler's Eccl. Hist., 4, 520. 



192 



John Calvin: The: Statesman. 



of both branches, the polity of only one. In both 
the emphasis upon lay share in government had 
large fruitage; in neither has the emphasis upon 
what were the peculiar doctrines of Calvinism, pre- 
destination, election, reprobation, survived the at- 
tacks of modern thought and the growing passion 
for offering to all men a free gospel. 

It is to the growth of the idea of lay share in 
political life that we are to look for the proof that 
the Reformation is in a deep sense the father of 
modern democracy. It is not that Calvin was the 
exclusive founder of the modern democratic state. 
His trend of thought was aristocratic, and his dis- 
trust of the plain man prevented him from giving 
the layman that tremendous share in government 
which has fallen to his lot in our days. Yet despite 
N Calvin's temperamental exclusiveness, the humble 
man has entered into his kingdom, partly by the 
measure of honor allowed him by Calvin, and 
largely by the inevitable drift of Calvin's larger 
conception of man's relation to God and human 
rulers, and the steady thrust of the ages towards 
democracy. 

How the seeds of Calvinism vitalized the Eng- 
lish-speaking communities and promoted demo- 
cratic hopes and practices, has been very clearly 
stated by Professor Charles Borgeaud, of the Uni- 
versity of Geneva. In his "Rise of Modern Democ- 
racy in Old and New England," 1894, he has de- 
voted himself to the history of democratic ideas 



Statesmanship. 



193 



and schemes of government. In his studies of 
ancient democracies he reached a somewhat nega- 
tive result; namely, that the most permanent con- 
tribution of ancient democracy was a new concep- 
tion of law. This possessed primarily a religious 
character, a revelation of the will of Heaven, 'but 
was, by the operation of popular suffrage, secular- 
ized. In the East the original stamp prevailed, 
and Law remained fixed, without flux or movement. 
In the West it became human and progressive. But 
this conception was more or less lost in the gloom 
of the Middle Ages. The Renaissance and Refor- 
mation and the political revolutions of the seven- 
teenth and eighteenth centuries inaugurated this 
conception of the modern State. The source of the 
modern State with its written Constitution is trace- 
able to the work of the Reformers in the sixteenth 
century. In this Professor Borgeaud has found a 
yokefellow in Professor H. L. Osgood, who says : 
"Calvinism, in spite of the aristocratic character 
which it temporarily assumed, meant democracy 
in Church government. . . ." Calvinists "did 
not need to search the records of antiquity to find 
communities where the theory of human equality 
was approximately realized. The local Church 
furnished a much better model than any Greek 
State. The theory upon which it was based was 
easily transferred to the domain of politics." In 
the bitter strifes between Cavalier and Puritan is 
to be found in the " 'Agreement of the People," put 
*3 



194 John Calvin: The Statesman. 

forward by Puritan officers, the first expression of 
the fundamental principles of modern democracy. 
The significance of the scheme has been generally 
neglected by English historians, even Hallam, the 
judicious, passing it by without slightest mention, 
while Gardiner criticises its suggestions "as but 
the dreams of a few visionaries." 

The scheme was more than a dream. The drafts 
of the proposed Constitution appeared three sepa- 
rate times, all with the same name, in 1647, 1648, 
and 1649. The discussions they aroused afforded 
the people opportunity to become familiar with the 
idea of a written constitution. And though the "in- 
substantial fabric" created by Cromwell's officers 
fell in the clash of swords, the idea defeated in Old 
England struck firm root in the New, and the 
dream of Puritan visionaries in the seventeenth 
century became the corner-stone of giant States in 
the eighteenth. 

Though the Reformation, and not the reform- 
ers, must be credited with the democracy of mod- 
ern times, it is true that the levers used by Calvin — 
the two principles of free inquiry, and the priest- 
hood of all believers — to break the power of the 
Holy See, gave legal character to the religious 
revolution, and contained the seeds of the political 
revolution, which was inevitably linked with the 
earlier one. It was a long path to the democracy 
of the Apostolic Church, and an immediate return 
meant a serious break with current ideas. The re- 



Statesmanship. 



195 



formers entered the path either ignorant of the 
end, or believing themselves able to stop short of 
the end. But once in, they proved leaders of a pro- 
cession whose ultimate power outran their will to 
control. In his theory of equality of all men in 
the Church, Calvin declared the authority of the 
faithful to choose their leaders. "But when the 
political question arose in Geneva in connection 
with the religious question, the man took the upper 
hand and his work became aristocratic." 1 The 
forms he imposed upon the exercise of the power 
of the faithful made their authority illusory. How- 
ever, the principle remained, and with mighty con- 
sequences. The right of the congregation became 
fact, and in due time came forth clad in the shape 
of the sovereignty of the people. 

When we remember that it was two and a half 
centuries ago that the English democrats made 
bold to proclaim their faith, 1648-9, and how far 
they were in advance of their day, we scarcely 
wonder that another time and another land were 
required for the complete outworking of their 
scheme. They could not expect compliance with 
their views from the great Cromwell. He was like 
a shipmaster in a storm, holding everything in sub- 
jection to his will between contending factions un- 
til some harbor should be reached. Cromwell was 
the leader of the Independents, as against the Epis- 
copalians and the Presbyterians. Yet he was un- 



lBorgeaud, 5. 



196 John Calvin: Ths Statesman. 



able to look with any favor upon the plan of the 
Independents, who were backing up the "Agree- 
ment of the People" so long as the contention be- 
tween his cause and that of the Cavaliers was hang- 
ing in the balance. In the main the triumph of 
Independency was the triumph of toleration and 
republicanism, but it was not to be won in the 
years immediately following Marston Moor, and 
when the king's head was the stake in 1649. With- 
out knowing how far his words would carry, Crom-« 
well said in 1648: "Every single man is judge of 
just and right, as to the good and ill of a king- 
dom." Yet he was no democrat. Like all truly 
great men, Cromwell loved order, and the propo- 
sition of the officers fathering the "Agreement" 
tended for the while to a break both with the king 
and the Parliament, and even with the lieutenant- 
general himself. 

The "Agreement" was turned down by Parlia- 
ment as a seditious document. The army was 
called to rendezvous at Ware in sections by the 
cautious Fairfax, yet stubborn men were found by 
thousands among the rank and file, and some officers 
of the line, who wore on their hats copies of 
the "Agreement of the People," with the motto, 
"England's Freedom and Soldiers' Rights," in cap- 
ital letters on the outside. Cromwell rode up. "Re- 
move me that paper !" he said. The refusal of the 
soldiers and their complaints aroused him, and rid- 
ing roughly among the ranks he commanded the 



Statesmanship. 



197 



arrest of the ringleaders. Then convoking a Coun- 
cil of War on the spot he had three condemned to 
die, and one of the three, chosen by lot, shot at 
the head of his regiment. 

Though the strong hand of Cromwell restored 
discipline, the army was not purified of its incip- 
ient republicanism, and when two-thirds of the regi- 
ments declared that they were ready to die rather 
than give up the "Agreement," Cromwell submitted, 
and peace with the democratic party was signed 
at Windsor. And on the 20th of January, 1648-9, 
the "Agreement" was presented to Parliament in 
the name of the army by the general-in-chief and 
his council of officers. But grave business was on 
hand, for on that very day -the trial of Charles 
Stuart began, and the democratic constitution was 
laid aside; it may be, had been both foreseen and 
discounted. It did not appear again. 

The tenor of this remarkable document, as first 
stated in 1647, and not printed in the original text 
until 1894, 1 can be understood from a brief quo- 
tation from Article IV: "That the power of this, 
and all future Representatives of this Nation, is 
inferior only to theirs who chuse them, and doth 
extend, without the consent or concurrence of any 
other person or persons, to the enacting, altering, 
and repealing of Lawes ; to the erecting and abol- 
ishing of Offices and Courts ; to the appointing, re- 
moving, and calling to account Magistrates, and 



1 Borgeaud, p. 67. 



igS John Calvin: The: Statesman. 

Officers of all degrees; to the making War and 
Peace ; to the treating with f orraigne States : And 
generally, to whatsoever is not expressly, or im- 
plyedly reserved by the represented themselves." 

After such fashion did the soldiers of Cromwell 
work out a system of government, expressed in a 
written constitution and established on the will 
of the people directly consulted. These soldier 
democrats were religious men, and to their religion 
must we go if we would understand their politics. 
The source of their ideas is the Bible. The example 
of a treaty of alliance between Jehovah and His 
people had furnished the idea of a contract between 
a sovereign and his subjects. This was the first 
form of the theory, and it was not long in taking 
the form of a contract existing between individuals 
themselves, constituting the nation. Now while 
writers like Richard Hooker and Thomas Hobbes 
represented the king as one party to the contract, 
the soldiers of Cromwell entirely ignored the king, 
and lifted the old Jewish and Huguenot conception 
out into the clear, where men now recognize and 
apply it. This became the theory of Locke and 
of Rousseau, save that they did not regard it from 
the religious viewpoint. 

In the disputes between the Independents and 
the Presbyterians, when the latter affirmed that the 
league of alliance mentioned in the Bible did not 
mean a contract between individuals such as the 
Church Covenant of the Independents, but a league 



Statesmanship. 



199 



between God and His people, the Independents 
answered that the one implied the other. It is 
easy to see how the founders of a Church upon this 
basis would act when it came to the organization 
of a State. A political community made up of 
Christian believers would most naturally transfer 
their methods in the one case to their needs in the 
other, and in the organization of the members of 
the sovereign people into a State would move for- 
ward by sure stages to the adoption of a constitu- 
tion by a popular vote, to the rule of the majority, 
as a necessary fiction and condition of a democratic 
government, and finally to the expression of it all 
in a written constitution. 

While Puritan democracy was beaten in the 
strife with the traditions of England, it gained a 
victory in the New World. The colonists of New 
England were exiles from the Puritan homes of 
Old England. In the virgin soil the ideas rooted 
themselves immovably and grew with unexampled 
vigor. Even before the landing of the men from 
the 'Mayflower they drew up their celebrated Cove- 
nant, "Anno Domini, 1620." Bancroft has been 
charged with enthusiasm and exaggeration in say- 
ing, "This was the birth of popular constitutional 
liberty," and that "in the cabin of the Mayflower 
humanity recovered its rights," on the ground that 
"humanity" was only about one hundred persons, 
and that the signers had no intention of founding 
a nation, seeking, as they were, a refuge only. But 



200 John Calvin: The; Statesman. 

when it is remembered that the Covenant was 
drawn up to silence some "strangers" who had 
joined them in London, and to unite the whole body 
in "unitie and concord," and that the Colonists 
added a Plantation Covenant or civil contract to 
their Church Covenant, and that a similar Planta- 
tion Covenant was usually the first step in the 
founding of every new settlement," it is not without 
reason that it has been assigned a place in the offi- 
cial collection of the Constitutions of the United 
States. In the history of the various Puritan set- 
tlements we find struggles, reactions, and seces- 
sions, but they were in some way connected with 
the very principle of liberty which animated the 
first exodus from the Mother Country. c_For when 
the colonists of Massachusetts Bay yielded to the 
tendency to follow their leaders in a sort of theo- 
cratic aristocracy, it fell out that John Winthrop, 
Jr., the friend of Roger Williams, and the son-in- 
law of Hugh Peters, the famous Independent 
preacher who became Cromwell's chaplain, led the 
secession to the banks of the Connecticut, and in 
the adoption of the Fundamental Orders of Con- 
necticut by the General Assembly at Hartford, on 
January 14, 1638-9, the immigrants formed the first 
American constitution accepted by the people, and 
the first written constitution of modern democracy. 

It has been asserted 1 that the written Consti- 
tutions of the American Republic had their origin 



1 Brooks Adams, in Atlantic Monthly, 1884. 



Statesmanship. 



201 



in the Royal Charters granted during the Middle 
Ages to the Companies of Merchants, and that, 
even earlier from the evolution of the town meeting 
among the German races we must date the similar 
product in the New England colonies. But in reply 
to this, and to the argument 1 that the colonists 
merely revived a custom which had been in "oc- 
cultation" a thousand years, a "case of revival of 
organs and functions on the recurrence of the 
primitive environment," the query of Borgeaud is 
worth putting at the close of this study of the 
origin of American democracy. How was it "that 
the revival of organs and functions" only took 
place in New England, while the "recurrence of 
the primitive environment" equally prevailed in the 
other colonies ?" 2 

fThe fact is indisputable that the democratic 
inheritance from the Teutonic races was imperiled 
by the aristocratic transformation then in progress 
in England, and that the American colonists trans- 
lated their religious ideas into political activity, 
else they would not have founded the democratic 
government of the town meeting. 

Coming down now to the War of the Revolu- 
tion, we discover again the influence of Calvinism. 
According to the same historian lately quoted, "The 
Revolution of 1776, as far as it was affected by re- 
ligion, was a Presbyterian measure. It was the 



1G. E. Howard, in Johns Hopkins University Studies, vol. 4. 
2 Borgeaud. Op. cit., 140. 



202 John Calvin : The Statesman. 

natural outgrowth of the principles which the Pres- 
byterianism of the Old World planted in her sons, 
the English Puritans, the Scotch Covenanters, the 
French Huguenots, the Dutch Calvinists, and the 
(Scotch) Presbyterians of Ulster." 1 Horace Wal- 
pole said in the English Parliament : "Cousin Amer- 
ica has run off with a Presbyterian parson." The 
reference was doubtless to Dr. John Witherspoon, 
a Presbyterian preacher, the only clergyman in the 
Continental Congress, who gave the deciding vote 
for the adoption of the immortal Declaration. Dr. 
Charles Elliott, editor of the Western Christian 
Advocate (Methodist), said that "in achieving the 
liberties of the United States the Presbyterians of 
every class were foremost," and Dr. Charles Hodge 
phrased the story of the war in happy fashion in 
his remark that the Shorter Catechism fought 
through successfully the War of American Inde- 
pendence. 

That these high claims are not without basis of 
truth and reason, let it be remembered that at the 
era of Independence, out of a total population of 
about three million, nine hundred thousand were 
of Scotch or Scotch-Irish origin, six hundred thou- 
sand were Puritan English, and over four hundred 
thousand were of Dutch, German Reformed, and 
Huguenot descent, nearly all of whom had pro- 
nounced Calvinistic leanings. Making all allow- 
ance for exaggeration, the estimates are significant, 



l Bancroft. 



Statesmanship. 



203 



and go far to buttress the vivid statement of Von 
Ranke, the profound historian: "John Calvin was 
the virtual founder of America." 
* JTot much more need be said, save to repeat 
with Emerson : "This is the key to the power of the 
greatest men, — their spirit diffuses itself/' 



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